Arranged by the Stars
by femme4jack
Summary: When Spike is upset about the arranged marriage of his favorite Peruvian princess, Jazz helps the human understand cultural differences regarding love and commitment. Story takes place in 1986 and 6-million years ago.  Rating now M.
1. A Wrinkled Letter

**Title:** Arranged by the Stars  
><strong>Author:<strong> Femme4jack on livejournal  
><strong>Rating:<strong> PG for now, may change in future chapters.  
><strong>Continuity:<strong> G1 (AU-ish)  
><strong>Pairing:<strong> Jazz/Prowl (mentioned in this chapter, explicit in future)  
><strong>Chapter Warnings:<strong> Cussing, culture fail (I have no idea if descendents of Incan royalty have arranged marriages), likely some canon-fail as well.

**Notes:** Written for the April 2011 challenge at the ProwlxJazz livejournal community. This silly bunny (among many others) bit me hard. References to G1 Season 1 Episode 9: Fire on the Mountain. Luisa, the Peruvian princess, isn't named in the episode, but she IS in the infamous sticker book!

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><p><strong>Arranged by the Stars Chapter 1: A Wrinkled Letter<strong>

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><p><em>The Ark, Mount Saint Hillary, 1986<em>

"Hey, what's the matter, little guy? Let the Jazz-man help?" the Porsche flopped down next to Spike whom he'd 'found' sitting in a back hall, curled up with his legs in his arms, fingering a piece of paper. In truth, Red Alert had gone into hysterics that Spike was near a restricted zone and Jazz had intervened before the security mech could traumatize the obviously upset human even more.

"Oh…hey Jazz," Spike said softly. "I got a letter from Luisa today," he explained, holding up the wrinkled paper that had clearly been read many times. The traces of minerals on it indicated that the boy had cried. The saboteur discretely scanned the contents, and knew immediately the source of the little organic's distress, though he waited for the human to explain it to him.

"Well, that's great, Spike. I know how special she is t' ya, and it's been a fair bit since you two talked, right?"

"Yeah … we were writing once a week last year after I met her in Peru, but things sort of tapered off. Both got busy, I guess. It was just … fun … you know? She knew about you guys and we just found one another's lives really interesting."

"Imagin' ya did. So spill it, little guy, what has your processors all in a twist? You can tell the ole Jazz-meister."

"She's inviting me to come back to Peru … for her wedding," Spike said softly.

"And ya thought maybe the two of ya had somethin' goin'?" Jazz asked gently.

"Well … not really … I mean we didn't ever really talk about it. I like her and all. But … damn Jazz, she says she's been promised to this guy since she was born. I guess Incan princesses, even ones whose families are miners, have their marriages arranged. It sucks! How can they do this to her?"

Jazz hummed thoughtfully. "Well, Spike, are ya sure she's upset 'bout it? It might be pretty normal t' her."

"How can it be normal to marry a guy from another village you've never even met just because some shaman said you were supposed to 'cause of how the stars lined up when you were born? What if he is a prick? What if he's, like, fifty years older than her or something? How can anyone get married to someone they've never even met, much less love?" Spike ranted, unconsciously wrinkling the letter in his hand.

Jazz took the letter and flattened the fragile paper gently with a finger, looking at Spike for 'permission' to read and getting a shrug.

"I know its hard t' understand, Spike, but it don't seem like she's upset," Jazz leaned down so his visor was level with the boy's eyes. "She's really proud - wants ya there so she can share part of her culture with ya. Fallin' in love's wonderful – feels great, no matter if yer metal or carbon. But that stuff doesn't last. Comes an' goes, and on your planet, cultures that arrange marriages with lots of family support usually have happier couples an' kid anyhow. Long as folks aren't forced or pressured to it, and Luisa agreed t'this, right?"

Spike was quiet, his biochemicals and vitals still showing he was quite upset, though his breathing had slowed down and he was clearly considering Jazz's words.

"Yeah … she did," Spike finally admitted. "Said she was proud that their families could trace back to this Incan king or god, Wiraqocha, or something like that. I just … I can't imagine agreeing to something like this."

"Hmm. 'm sure ya can't imagine eatin' grubs either," Jazz said with a chuckle, "but some folks do an' it's a delicacy. That's the thing with culture, Spike-mah-man. People … even my people … sometimes think it's a universal, that just 'cause somethin' is right for them makes it right for everyone."

"But what if she's not happy?" Spike asked, sounding much younger than his sixteen years.

"She's got a big family that cares for her, who'll look out for her. In most places where marriages are arranged like this, they understand that people need more than just one person in life to keep 'em happy. They need their village, their friends, their family. Their spouse is just one part of a bigger circle that keeps 'em whole. You Americans, from what I see, put way too much pressure on just one person for that."

Spike shrugged again, grimacing at the truth of the last statement, about how miserable and alone his dad was when his mom had died. They didn't have any sort of family or village around them until they'd come to live with the Autobots.

Jazz reached down and put a finger under his chin. "Look – from what I've read about her people, she's not even gonna have ta leave home. He'll come live with her family – parents, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, the whole bit. Ya better believe they're gonna be watchin' out an' makin' sure he's good ta her."

Spike gave Jazz a doubtful look.

"Tell ya what, Spike," the saboteur offered. "I'll keep a sensor on her, kay? Autobot honor," he raised a hand in a 'scout salute'. "But I want ya to hear me out 'bout somethin' first."

"What's that?" the boy asked with a mixture of reluctance and relief.

"Well…I know your dad an' Bee explained t' ya 'bout ole Prowler an' me."

"Yeah…it is still strange for me to think about, you guys being robots and stuff, but I get it," Spike said in a rush, blushing. "When I don't think about it too hard and have all that cultural stuff you talked about get in the way, I think it's really cool, even though you're guys." Spike admitted, looking down again and refusing to meet Jazz's visor.

Jazz gave a snort and decided to let that final statement drop for the moment. There were things more important than clearing up human misconceptions about gender. "What if I told ya that Prowler and I were in one of those arranged marriages that is twistin' ya up so bad? 'Cept we did more than just get married without knowin' each other. We bonded our sparks, gave each other part of our physical souls."

Spike's eyes widened and he blushed even more furiously. "I … um … I had no idea you guys did that. I mean … I know about bonding and stuff, but, I sort of … didn't think... how did it happen? Who arranged your marriage … I mean … your bonding?"

"That, my little friend, is a good story that'll be even better out on a drive with some music while I patrol. Ya game?"

"Sure … I mean … yeah. It makes the whole thing even weirder, but yeah, I want to know."

Jazz gave his Cheshire grin, stood back and transformed, and the Porsche opening his passenger door.

TBC


	2. MatrixMatchmaker

**Title**: Arranged by the Stars  
><strong>Chapter Title<strong>: Chapter 2 _Matrix-Matchmaker_  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: G1 AU  
><strong>Author<strong>: femme4jack  
><strong>Pairing<strong>: Jazz/Prowl  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: Slash, lots of liberties with G1 canon history, mentions mechpreg  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Spike is in for many surprises when Jazz tells him how he and Prowl ended up bonded. Hopefully his brain won't be completely broken by the time the get back to the Ark.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: Written for the April ProwlxJazz community challenge on livejournal.  
>Sorry, lots of dialog and exposition this chapter, and I had way too much fun reminiscing about music that come out in 1986. Next chapter will be flashback, and will have action. And fireworks. Lots of fireworks. Oh, and Happy Belated Birthday to my coconspirator Gatekat. Here is the chapter you asked for. Songs mentioned in this chapter: <em>Walk Like an Egyptian<em> by the Bangles, _The Greatest Love of All_ by Whitney Houston, and _Venus_ by Bananarama.

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><p>Arranged by the Stars 2: Matrix-Matchmaker<p>

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><p><em>Somewhere near the Ark, Mount Saint Hillary, 1986<em>

Spike Witwicky had one hand casually on the steering wheel of the 935 Turbo Porsche in Martini Racing colors that handled the potholes and pitted dirt tracks surrounding Mount Saint Hilary as though he were warming up for Le Mans. Jazz had the music up, the windows down, and both sentient beings were thoroughly enjoying the drive as they headed in the direction of a more developed Forest Service road . Jazz's patrol route that day included the roads and highways that wound through the mountains and along the Columbia River between the Portland/Vancouver metro areas and the Tri-Cities. Once they hit the asphalt, Spike was certain the lonely miles would be just the excuse that the Porsche needed to open up to speeds far surpassing the normal limits of a human engineering. Unlike the Twins, who had not yet learned the finer points of making nice with the squishies, Jazz had an agreement with the State Patrol.

Maybe it was the the way Spike sang along to _Walk like an Egyptian_, a single by the Bangles had been released earlier in the week, but when they hit Forest Road 25, Jazz finally decided it was time to roll up the windows and talk.

"So, ya wanna know 'bout Prowler an' me? Or are ya gonna keep singin'? Cause I gotta tell ya, the next song up is Whitney, and I'm just not sure I can take that, little Spike."

Spike stuck his tongue out at the radio. "Thanks, Jazz. Thanks a lot. Yeah, I'll spare you. But you should know, the chicks swoon when I sing like her."

"Wasn't implyin' that ya couldn't give the Queen o' Soul a run for her money, kid. I was just worried I might fall for ya or somethin', if ya started in about the greatest love of all with that croonin' falsetto."

"Dude, that is just so not cool to tease me like that, and I thought you said Aretha was the Queen," Spike gave the dash a playful kick.

"Hey now, watch mah interior," Jazz grumbled, before adding in a serious growl, "Aretha is the Goddess, and don't ya forget it."

"Got it. Worship Aretha. Don't mock my singing, and I won't kick your dash."

"I was givin' ya a compliment. Was actually gonna ask if ya'd sing that one by Bananarama for me."

Jazz gave a mechish giggle that sounded like something was rattling in his engine.

"Venus? Man, that is just so wrong. Save me from that mental image, and ... just tell me about this whole arranged wedding thing. Who set the two of you up? Was it your parents? Do you ... like ... even have parents?

Jazz laughed hard at the question. "Well, t' answer your first question, Optimus Prime, himself, arranged our bondin'. And the correct term's creators, different from parents, though dependin' on who made ya, some are more like what you think of as parents than others. But that's part of the story. So, ya know where little robots come from, right Spike?"

Spike snorted. "Yeah. Two robots love each other a whole lot, build a frame and go to Vector Sigma."

Jazz chuckled, shaking Spike a bit. "_That_ is what Ratchet will tell ya in Autobot Health Class. And it's true. Mostly. Most of us were sparked by Vector Sigma. Most of us were never _little robots_. We're sparked with a purpose already coded t' our processors. Safest way t' make new bots. Vector Sigma is a processor we don't rightly understand. It connects ... with somethin' beyond this universe, and brings new life straight from Primus. So, everything is just fine and dandy long as Prime has the key, and as long as folks are bein' fair 'bout who gets to make new bots. They tried to set up a system that worked - that made sure there weren't too many of one kind of us, that the needs of different cities and classes were bein' treated equal. Cities, clade groups, different trade an' craft guilds could all commission new bots, and no group was supposed t' be more important than others. It wasn't perfect by a long shot, but could've been worse."

When Spike didn't ask any questions, the saboteur continued. "The military didn't like that so much. They felt that the other bots should serve their interests, that they should be the ones making those decisions in the name of expandin' and protectin' the Empire. What they _really_ didn't like was when the Council put limits on the numbers they could have from Vector Sigma, essentially only allowin' them t' replace what they lost. We'd already had one war on Cybertron 'cause the military wanted t' be in control, so the Council decided the only way t' protect the whole planet was t' limit the number of mechs with integtrated weaponry, make sure they knew that the military served the masses and not the other way 'round."

"Ok, that makes sense," Spike said, a bit impatient. "But what does that have to do with you and Prowl getting married ... I mean .. bonded."

"Gettin' t' that, kiddo. Ok, so Vector Sigma was the way most of us came t' be - sparked for a purpose, commissioned by the folks we'd be workin' with - our clade, kind of like an extended family, 'cept it's based on function and not genetic connection. Got it?"

Spike nodded, still baffled but trying to go along for the ride.

"There's another way life can be made, though. The Alphas - our nobles - had long had the practice of arrangin' spark bonds. New sparks can be made by a bonded pair or group, who merge their sparks with the intention of makin' a new one. It is _very_ dangerous t' everyone involved. So you've gotta make sure just the right sparks come together, ones that'll make a balanced new spark. Vector Sigma could create stable, balanced sparks, long as it was workin' right. But kindlin' merges can lead t' really imbalanced, messed up sparks. The nobility were really the only ones with the resources to get the medic care it took t' make new sparks that way and make sure the right sparks were combined. And those sparks, by their very nature, couldn't be put in an adult frame. They need time t' grow up, become strong enough to handle all of the protocols and codin' that comes with an adult function. So, essentially, the nobles made kids. They were very elite 'bout the whole thing. Made up slag that only Alpha sparks could safely kindle, and that havin' the lower classes merge t' make life would pollute the planet. Unless the sparks combinin' were their own, new sparks should only come from Vector Sigma, because like them, it was a direct link t' Primus. And they made sure their wealth and power only went t' mechs sparked through a kindlin' bond, and those bonds were controlled by heads of the Alpha clades."

"So that is where the arranged bonds came from? Some noble deciding who would make good little noble sparks together?"

Spike huffed, even less convinced that the whole arranged marriage thing was a good idea.

"That's how it started. But Prowler and I ain't nobles. Prime wasn't even sparked a noble. He was _made_ into a Prime by one of the original Alphas, a really brave mech named Alpha Trion. That's a different story, though. Mirage, Perceptor, Wheeljack, and, if ya believe it, Starscream are the only living Alphas we know 'bout."

"Not Tracks?" Spike asked, even more confused.

"Nah, not Tracks. He loved a noble and ended up with his memories when the towers fell, but that's his story t' tell. I'd appreciate it if ya didn't tell him ya know even that much. He's nothin' to be 'shamed of, but he hates that he's not an Alpha."

"Got it. I'll forget Tracks isn't an Alpha, especially since I didn't even know what one was before now. So nobles can make baby bots, but it's dangerous and needs just the right sparks or you end up with a real mess."

"That's the basics. So, what made an even bigger mess was that Megatron took over Vector Sigma and took the key for himself, so the military could be in control of the creation of new bots. Vector Sigma makes whatever you instruct it to make, but it doesn't have t' like it, and it _did not_ like Megatron buildin' and makin' bots whose only function was to dominate and destroy, and who had little free will of their own. So, Vector Sigma, or whoever made Vector Sigma, destroyed the key so Megatron couldn't have it. Which meant that no one couldn't replace _any_ who were lost in the war. Well, the only way we could was with noble kids, and the Alphas weren't too keen on their sparklings bein' raised as enforcers, miners, entertainers, merchants, and everything else ya need for a society to function. Megatron wanted their sparklings for himself, too, t' reformat in t' warriors. When they wouldn't give em up, he took out every tower on Cybertron."

"He was going to take kids and reprogram them?" Spike felt ill, and Jazz cracked the window to give him some air.

"Yep, an' that's not all. He was takin' regular mechs and reprogramin' 'em t' his will. If he couldn't make warriors with Vector Sigma, he was gonna make 'em out of kids 'n regular mechs. And even worse, Shockwave started experimentin' in mergin' sparks without a bond, or forcin' 'em t' bond and make new sparks. And remember what I said 'bout how dangerous that is, and what kind of sparks it makes. Megatron used their instability - stuck em in adult warrior frames, and stuck em on the font lines as cannon fodder."

"Shit," Spike whispered.

"Yeah, totally sucked. And there we were, losin' folks left and right in a war none of us were built for, and no way t' make new people, not that we really wanted to make mechs just t' fight and die, but what choice did we have? So can ya guess where this is goin' Spike."

Spike was quiet for a moment, watching the forest race by. "You had to bond, to create new sparks, but it had to be arranged, just like it was with the nobles."

"Bingo, kid. And that made for interestin' times. Ya see, mechs like me were used to hookin' up with whoever suited our fancy. Most of us didn't bond - too risky that ya might make a new spark that was a total mess. Some of us had one or a few lovers for most of our functioning. Some bounced from mech t' mech, 'cause sharin' pleasure and lovin' lots of mechs was just part of our culture. Some of us stuck t' our own clade. Others had lots of lovers from other groups. But it didn't have anything t' do with makin' new mechs. But now we were faced with needin' t' bond t' keep our species alive, and bondin' is a pretty exclusive thing. Ya don't just go given part of your spark t' someone and then pretend nothin' has changed. Ya can't pretend that, cause you feel what the other one feels, and blockin' that is exhuastin' 'n dangerous," Jazz paused as he turned from Forest Road 25 onto Wind River Road at Swift Reservoir.

They took in the view for a moment, both in their own thoughts, before Jazz continued. "We didn't just have t' bond, but we needed t' bond t' the right spark or sparks t' make kids that were balanced, so we weren't condemnin' the little one t' a functionin' full o' misery. And that didn't necessarily mean bondin' with the mech ya loved the most, or were most attracted, or even liked, for that matter. It meant bondin' with one that balanced the weaknesses in your own spark. On top of that, we needed t' make sparks that could grow up fast ... at least by our standards. Ya can't be a sparkling for long in a war, sad as it is. So the sparks that bonded had t' be matched with that outcome in RAM, too."

"Ok, I think I know where this is going," Spike grimaced, and tried to imagine mechs like Ironhide, Cliffjumper, or, God help them all, Huffer, having marriages arranged for them, perhaps to someone they couldn't stand, in order to make a balanced baby. "So, how did you and Prowl figure out you were the right balance?"

Jazz laughed. "Ole Prowler 'n me never woulda figured that one out on our own, Spike. Prime used the Matrix of Leadership t' figure who would be compatible, safe t' put together. Prowler an' I were his senior commanders, so, we stepped forward as volunteers for his matchmakin' as an example t' the rest. We just never guessed in a million vorns that he'd end up matchin' us. Prowl and I ... well ... hate isn't too strong a word for how we felt 'bout one another. We didn't understand each other, we both thought the other was just plain sick in the processors. I thought he was a cold sparked glitch who didn't give a slag 'bout the mechs he sent out t' die, who based it all on numbers an' didn't have a spec of intuition or compassion in spark or processor. He thought I was an impulsive maniac who couldn't process past the klik right in front of me, t' put it mildly. I think the only reason we didn't kill each other was that Prime needed both of us, and we were his mechs. Ya know how it is with Optimus, he's _Prime_, ya just have t' trust him. He said he needed both of us, and we believed him. But the fireworks were impressive, and I'm not talkin' the pretty kind."

"Wow. So ... Prime used the matrix of leadership, and it told him that the two of you were supposed to bond ... and ... make baby sparks? Even though you hated each other?" Spike swallowed and rubbed his head, which was starting to feel more broken than usual. "Did he just ask the Matrix, and it said you two were supposed to bond?"

"Well...sorta...," Jazz paused for a moment, trying to decide just how much to tell Spike that orn. His alt form bounced on the road a few times in anticipation of the human's reaction. "He had t' merge with us first. Every single Autobot who volunteered. In fact ... I think there were quite a few volunteers just 'cause it meant gettin' to scrape paint an do the ole chest tango with the boss."

Spike was silent for just long enough for Jazz to begin to get worried that he really had broken the kid. Finally, the teen lifted his face out of his hands, only to bury it again and mumble. "Man, you suck. You really really suck. You break my brain on purpose."

"Hmmm, just thought ya might like the mental image, little Spike,"

Jazz snickered, opening up his engine to full throttle, asking in a slightly evil tone, "Wanna know which ones are ours?"


	3. Before the Fireworks

**Title**: Arranged by the Stars  
><strong>Chapter Title<strong>: Chapter 3 _Before the Fireworks_  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: G1 AU  
><strong>Author<strong>: femme4jack  
><strong>Pairing<strong>: Future Jazz/Prowl, past Optimus/Prowl, past Ironhide/Ratchet, future Hound/Mirage, future Ironhide/Ratchet/Wheeljack  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13 (Future R or above)  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: Slash (future pnp, tactile, spark), arranged sparkbonds, lots of liberties with G1 canon history, future mechpreg  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Optimus reveals the Matrix's findings, and fireworks ensue.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: Written for the April ProwlxJazz community challenge at livejournal. ETA Changed chapter title to BEFORE the fireworks, since I'm pretty sure this was just a prelude to the explosion.

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><p>Arranged by the Stars 3: Before the Fireworks<p>

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><p><em>Autobot Base, Iacon, Approximately 6 million years ago<em>

Prowl stood at attention in front of the massive desk, his sensor panels held stiff, high and proud. He, along with five of the other initial dozen volunteers had been summoned to their Prime to learn the results of Prime's merge with their sparks. Of the others in the room, only Mirage was showing the proper decorum for an officer summoned to the presence of the avatar of their god. He and the spy stood straight, optics cast appropriately downward, pointedly ignoring the boisterous conversation of three of the four others in the room as they waited at attention.

Well ... outwardly ignoring it, at least. Inwardly he was seething as Jazz sat back in Prime's own chair, his feet up on their Lord Prime's desk. The fact that the head of Special Ops was a former Decepticon, highly placed in Megatron's ranks, and was now among the Prime's highest ranking officers, rather than offline for his crimes, was almost enough to make Prowl question the soundness of Prime's processors. _Almost_ enough...but his loyalty protocols firmly suppressed the brief rebellion that occasionally slithered through his code. If it had been any mech other than _Prime_ who insisted that Jazz could be trusted, Prowl certainly would have stood his ground. But it was _Prime_ who had elevated Jazz to his current position, at the same time that he had made Prowl his SIC.

Yes, _Prime_ had asked him to trust Jazz, or at least, work with him as though he did. And _Prime_, likewise, had asked his officers to consider what many thought was a suicidal effort to continue their species and give them a reason to continue to fight. Yes, the same _Prime_, who had deigned, on occasion, to call the Praxian to his berth where he would touch the trembling enforcer's spark with the brilliance of his own. (Just opening the memory files was nearly enough to send him into processor lock). It was so...improper, for one such as Prime to touch a low-caste, sparked enforcer such as himself, no matter how far he'd risen in the ranks due to his unique tactical programming and battle computer. Yet merging with that massive spark had transformed Prowl's already core-coded loyalty into something harder and stronger than the iridium of his spark chamber.

Which was why Prowl could not bring himself to say 'no' when Prime had asked his SIC to engage in this irrational, tank-churning plan. Oh, he had argued, vehemently, harder than he had ever argued with Prime before. It was his duty to protest, to explain the risks, to illustrate the low probability of success no matter what variables Optimus threw at him. The idea was ludicrous. Mecha outside of the Alpha-caste did not bond. There were reasons for this beyond the very obvious risk to sparks exploding into balls of plasma when a kindling went wrong, taking out every mech in the merge.

And _Jazz_, of course, had applauded the plan. The former 'Con _knew in his spark_ that it would not only preserve their kind, but would be _just what the Autobots were needin' t' give 'em hope_.

_Jazz_, the pit-spawned creature with organic-like instincts who did not process beyond his own hedonistic impulses. _Jazz,_ the mastermind of seemingly impossible schemes in which he trusted his imaginary _intuition_ that was, of course, nothing more than an excuse to rely on fallible emotion when missions demanded the rigor of facts and data. _Jazz_, the mech was now smirking, saying something that Prowl instantly honed in on.

"So who are ya hopin' t' get, Prowler?" the visored mech purred. "Which of us turns yer protoform t' molten metal?"

Prowl pointedly ignored the offensive question, and remained at attention as Jazz and Wheeljack continued to laugh and joke as though they were miners back on planet in a pleasure house and not in their Lord Prime's office waiting to find out whom they would be sharing their spark with for the remainder of their functioning. At least, Prowl pretended to ignore Jazz's question. In truth, he could not help but to wonder. Which of the five in the room would he be forced to bare his spark to, if that indeed was the purpose of Prime's summons? Of course he could say no. Prime had made that perfectly clear, many times over. But he wouldn't. Not when Prime had asked this of him. Not when the trillions of calculations of an engaged battle computer might be the only thing that could save the merging sparks from going critical. He needed to be involved with this plan. Intimately involved.

He understood, in theory, the formulas the Alpha medic-priests and clade lords used to determine who would bond and kindle successfully, though he didn't have the proper subroutines installed to evaluate or even to collect the relevant data on the five sparks in the room. He knew, in theory, that the sparks needed to complement one another, to balance one another on a subatomic frequency. Sparks resonated at different frequencies, and if he were correct, frequency resonance was far more important than the more obvious balancing of spark traits that artists and musicians celebrated. The later was actually a byproduct of the former. It was important to find sparks whose subatomic frequency were in the right kind of harmony. They could not have the same or even a close frequency of vibration. That would lead to spark attraction, but was disastrous in a kindling merge. To safely and successfully kindle, they needed to be at frequencies that were wide apart, yet still harmonized. He could only hope that if a spark of the right frequency existed for him, it would belong to a mech he would find tolerable, and who would tolerate him. That was all that was needed among the Alphas, and all he would allow himself to hope for.

Without changing his posture, he surreptitiously scanned the room with the stealth sensors of his panels, paying attention to the spark signatures of those present, as well as the myriad of emotions expressed in EM fields held tightly against frames, careful not to brush against one another. Everyone in the room had some mixture of nervous fear threatening to lash out against the rest. Everyone, that was, save Mirage, who was a pool of calm, certain of his place, waiting to do his Lord's bidding, as his coding demanded. Prior to the fall of the towers, Mirage, a second creation of a powerful Iacon clade, would have been summoned in much the same way and told his fate, perhaps only a few orns before his bonding. For the Alpha, this day was a bitter-sweet comfort to his core code.

If Prowl were to admit to a preference, it would be Mirage. Even though the spy was Jazz's SIC in SpecOps, Prowl could not hold that against the talented noble. In fact, he was suspicious that the surprising successes of Jazz's chaotic operations were more to do with Mirage than any other factor. The spy certainly was one of the most beautifully constructed mechs among the Autobots, as was to be expected from his background; he was not just as a noble, but one who had been designed to be offered as a potential consort and bondmate to those of the highest rank, possible even Prime himself. Prowl was not immune from the effects that the blue and white mech's outstanding nanite craftsmanship could arouse. But more than that, the noble gracefully embodied so much that had been lost - a sense of decorum, propriety, and place that the 'Cons had swept away with their brutal kill or be killed culture. Sadly, the Autobots, too, had lost so much of what had made Cybertron great in order to survive the onslaught. In Mirage, Prowl might find a restful haven of what had once been.

Though, of course, in what had been, a mech like Prowl would never have bonded or kindled.

Prowl next considered Wheeljack, an Alpha, but among the elite scientific clades who traced their origins to Alpha Trion himself. If not for the strength of his processors, no one would have guessed Wheeljack's origins, from the same clade that had produced Perceptor. Wheeljack had been en enigma to his house since he had kindled, so much so that some had whispered he was a kindling gone bad, perhaps even an elicit creation from outside of an officially condoned bond. Wheeljack lacked the balance and dignity inherent in an Alpha scientist, and yet it was the mech's disturbing lateral processing that made him such an asset to their cause. Prowl knew Wheeljack's assets, and knew how to call on them in the interests of their missions. It did not make working with the explosion-prone scientist any less exasperating. But, at least he could count on Wheeljack to produce whatever was required by the challenges at hand, somehow making do with shoddy supplies and a rushed timeframe that only seemed to enliven his creativity. Prowl supposed, if he were asked by Prime, he could bond with Wheeljack, and perhaps provide the stability and order the mech sorely needed.

His attention moved next to Ratchet, who was sitting sullenly on a chair in the corner, tinkering with a sensor array he had removed earlier from Ironhide. Prowl knew the medic and frontliner had quietly become lovers over the vorns, and were as close to one another as any in their faction. He, like nearly everyone on base, was also aware of the explosive arguments the two had been having ever since Prime requested that his officers set an example for the rest of the Autobots by consenting to arranged bonds for the sake of the future. In the end, both had stepped forward out of duty and loyalty, and both were equally miserable about it, given the likelihood that the matrix would find their sparks incompatible for kindling. The fact that Ironhide had not been among those summoned was telling, if, in fact, they had all been selected for the first of the bonding ceremonies.

Though very few would guess, Prowl was not emotionless, nor did he lack compassion. His strength was his ability to set aside his emotions for the sake of decisions that needed to be made, and the fortitude to cope with the aftermath of those decisions. He remained isolated and aloof not because he did not care, but because if he became too attached, he would no longer be able to function in the role Prime needed him to fill. He had to admit, he was concerned for Ratchet and Ironhide. It was one thing to ask this unsettling bonding of an unattached mech like himself, or a hedonistic player like Jazz, or even Mirage, who had literally spent much of his functioning expecting to have his bond arranged by his lord. But to ask mechs who clearly loved one to bond to someone else seemed unnecessarily cruel to Prowl, when they had all lost so much already. He trusted Prime, but this whole plan had challenged that trust unlike anything that had taken place since the orn Orion had been recognized by the Council as the matrix-carrier.

Well, if Prowl was to bond to Ratchet, he would certainly be willing to turn a blind optic to the two continuing their liaisons. It was the logical course to take, and would be in all of their best interests.

If Ratchet was sullen, then Hound was, by contrast, ebullient. The green scout was one of those mechs whom even the most disagreeable in their ranks found likable, and for good reason. Hound was the epitome of a loyal Autobot whom one could depend on whether in the middle of a searing fire fight or over a cube of high grade when a mech needed a willing audio and strong arms to rest in. Not that Prowl would ever have found himself in that situation with the scout. Hound got around to as many berths on base as Jazz, but it was usually as a comforter rather than a seducer and hedonist. Prior to the war, Hound had been a guardian of Alpha younglings, teaching them skills such as tracking and hunting. Of all of those present, he was the one most visibly excited to kindle new sparks, and was the only non-officer to volunteer for the first round of the effort after word of the plan had drifted around base. It would not be difficult to be bonded to a mech like Hound, who found something to like in everyone and who would be an excellent mentor and caretaker if kindling was actually successful. Prowl nearly smiled as he noticed Hound obviously checking out each mech in the room, the scout's EM field barely containing his excitement, tentatively reaching out to nearly brush against the others as if to ask, 'are you the one?'

The tactician reluctantly turned his attention to the room's sixth occupant. As he scanned Jazz, he saw one of the saboteur's sensor horns twitch as he spoke with Wheeljack, registering a scan it should have been impossible for him to sense. Prowl considered if the head of SpecOps had sensor-types that were not on the schematics in his files. His battle computer judged the probability of just that scenario to be 96.61923 based on previous incidents, so he immediately submitted a memo to Prime requesting new, accurate schematics, verified physically Ratchet. It was imperative that Prowl know every asset they had in order to effectively plan their strategies, even the assets of a dead end Polyhexian who thought he was entitled to secrets none of the rest of his faction were allowed to keep from the executive officer.

Jazz suddenly was openly staring at him, a wide, dangerous smile on his faceplates. "Did ya _really_ just request a new version of m' schematics, mech? 'Cause if I didn' know better, I'd think ya were hopin t' use 'em. Didn't know ya fancied me that way. I'm honored, though I should really tell ya, yer not my type."

"Intercepting private communiqués between executive officers is a prosecutable offense," Prowl stated in an emotionless voice, though inwardly he was seething. "I could have you escorted to the brig right now, both for intercepting that memo, and for failing to note all of your upgrades on your schematics."

"Ya could escort me there yourself, Prowler, an' I could give ya a tour of my schematics that ya'd never forget," Jazz suggested with a rev of his engine that had Wheeljack finials flashing brightly with amusement.

"You are deluding yourself, Jazz. I would not interface with you if you were the last mech functioning." Prowl responded, and instantly regretted it when every mech in the room except for himself and Mirage began chuckling.

"Prowl, even you have to know there is a 1 in 5 chance that you will be interfacing with Jazz within a decaorn, as soon as the ceremony and party are over," Hound said gently, the genuinely good mannered scout trying hard not to laugh too much as his SICs expense.

Prowl turned toward Hound and began a patient lecture, "Actually, that is incorrect, Hound. The probability differs for each of you, based on the date and conditions when each of us were sparked, or in Mirage and Wheeljack's case, kindled, our spark resonance frequencies, and a number of other factors that complicate the equations. I can tell you with certainty that _if_ Prime is planning to arrange bondings for each of us to one of the others present, which is by no means conclusive, Jazz and I have the least statistical chance of being bonded of any who are present, which is probably for the best for all involved."

"No one will argue with that," the unusually quiet Ratchet finally grumbled.

Prowl was saved from Jazz's retort (or agreement) by the door the connected Prime's office to his quarters sliding open for the massive mech. Jazz vacated Prime's chair, and, instead, perched himself on the corner of the massive desk. Mirage gave Prime a sweeping, elegant bow that ended with his settling on his knees, waiting for his Lord to invite him to rise, while Prowl minutely straightened his own posture, pulling his sensor panels in even tighter and higher so as not to display a hint of his seething emotions through them.

"Please be at ease and take a seat, all of you," the regal baritone filed the room, almost reluctantly, as though Prime himself were nervous about what he was about to propose to his the five officers and one enlisted mech in the chamber. Prowl sat on the chair especially tooled to his frame, maintaining his formal posture as the rest of those present who were not already seated took their places. Mirage, he noted, had to literally force himself to disobey his core coded formality in order to follow his core coding to instantly obey his Prime. The code conflict made his hands shake slightly.

Once they were settled (Jazz still perched on the corner of Prime's desk, much to Prowl's dismay), Prime regarded all of them with his fathomless blue optics, making Prowl's sensor panels give a tiny twitch in excitement as he remembered the last time those optics had all but burned into his own.

"I know what I have proposed to you is not an easy challenge, and my already great respect for each of you has only deepened with your willingness to put aside many of your own hopes and plans in order to take the grave risk I am asking of you. It is not only the desire to repopulate our species and prevent the Decepticons from spreading their tyranny to other worlds that has called you forward. It is also to give us something worth fighting for. Survival and revenge cannot sustain us in the long run. Having a new generation to protect, mentor, and give hope to will motivate us in a way that mere survival and anger never can."

Prowl realized in surprise that the speech was as much an effort for Optimus to calm himself as it was to inspire them. Prime was nervous, _very_ nervous about what he was about to tell them.

"As you have likely surmised, of all of those willing to allow me to see in their sparks, the matrix found compatibilities among the six of you. If you are still willing, I would like to see two of the compatible pairs here publicly bonded with great celebration within the decaorn."

"But y' said all six of us have compatibilities," Jazz said, uncertainly. "Why only four?"

Prime regarded them all steadily for a moment before speaking, his attention turning toward Ratchet and Wheejack. "The Matrix found that Ratchet and Wheeljack are compatible for kindling. However, the Matrix also believes that it would be unwise for them to bond at this time. There is a possibility that with time and the proximity, as they work together, there might be a shift in spark resonance that would allow for a trine that includes Ironhide."

Ratchet was silent, while Wheeljack's finials lit up with a dozen different emotions. Prowl noticed that Ratchet's steady medic hands were shaking. "The matrix believe it is possible for Ironhide to bond with me?" he said softly. "To kindle?"

"Only as part of a trine," Optimus said gently. "I would ask that instead of supporting this effort through your bond, for now, both you and Wheeljack support it by working much more closely together than you have to this point. I want both of you to work together on the sparkling frames for those who will be kindled, and to be present to monitor all of the kindling merges and framings. There are no longer any functioning Alpha medic-priests to oversee such matters. This will become your roles in this effort. In time, you both might find that you are indeed ready to bond on your own, with Ironhide's blessing, or that the trine will become an option acceptable to the matrix."

Wheeljack grinned broadly and slapped Ratchet on the back struts. "I think we can handle that, Prime. I would've been building to those frames anyhow. Having Hatchet here involved will just make them turn out all the better. And I can make some fireworks for the bonding ceremony, since I won't be planning it."

Prowl watched as Ratchet grimaced and tensed slightly at the touch, but then nodded his head in acceptance. "Thank you Prime," he said with uncharacteristic emotional static. "but why isn't 'Hide here if that was the matrix's suggestion?"

Optimus chuckled. "Ironhide isn't present because initially you were summoned and he was not. Originally the Matrix planned to have you and Wheeljack bond despite the existing relationship. When Ironhide found out that only you had been summoned, he demanded that I merge with him again so he could give the Matrix a piece of his processors. He is still recovering from the merge, and is the reason all of you were left waiting."

Ratchet vented loudly, then chuckled. "Well...that's Ironhide for you. And Wheeljack and I might as well work more closely together. He already is my most frequent patient," the medic pointed out, relief clearly written on his faceplates. Even though Ratchet and Wheeljack had never been known to be close, and Wheeljack's frequent accidents had shorted the CMO of supplies far more times than could be forgiven easily, Prowl could sense the relief radiating off of both mechs, which only served to contrast with building anxiety filling the room from the remaining four, who were now fully under Prime's attention.

"Of all of the volunteers I merged with and whose sparks I examined, the resonance between these two hoped-for pairs is by far the strongest and most capable of safely kindling. If you will all agree, in a decaorn, we will celebrate with all of the pomp of an Alpha bonding the joining of Prowl with Jazz and Mirage with Hound."

With that pronouncement, the fireworks in the room began to go off.


	4. The Fireworks

**Title**: Arranged by the Stars  
><strong>Chapter Title<strong>: Chapter 4 _The Fireworks_  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: G1 AU  
><strong>Author<strong>: femme4jack  
><strong>Pairing<strong>: Future Jazz/Prowl, past Optimus/Prowl, future Hound/Mirage, current Ironhide/Ratchet, future Ironhide/Ratchet/Wheeljack  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: Slash (future pnp, tactile, spark), arranged sparkbonds, lots of liberties with G1 canon history, future mechpreg and sparklings (kindling new sparks, immediately framed, not carried, if that makes a difference for those who are squicked)  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Some tempers explode, others are settled, and Prowl reveals rather spectacularly why he can't function logically when it comes to Jazz.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: Written for the ProwlxJazz April 2011 challenge  
>::Text:: Comm chatter<br>Like the previous chapter, this is flashback. Sorry if that confused some folks in ch. 3. Also, so you won't be confused, I'm revising chapter 2 where Jazz tells Spike who the surviving Alphas are. They should be Mirage, Perceptor, Wheeljack, Starscream, _and_Skyfire. There is an additional Alpha, revealed in a circumspect manner in this chapter, whom Jazz did not list because the mech in question never received adult Alpha coding when he upgraded to his mech frame, and he hasn't regarded himself as one since joining the Autobots. Can you figure it out?

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><p>Arranged by the Stars 4: The Fireworks<p>

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><p><em>Autobot Base, Iacon, Approximately 6-million years ago. <em>

When the explosion came, it was not with shouts, but a fury of comm signals on the private channels that connected every Autobot with their Prime, channels normally used only in an emergency, or at Prime's initiative.

::Sir, I really don't think this is an appropriate topic for humor. I will make a better effort at tolerating Jazz's behavior, so long as he is not putting our faction, or you, at risk, but please do not joke about such things. Others might think you are being serious and I would not want word of this to leak to the rest of the base. The respect for the chain of command itself is at risk.::

::Um...Prime...sir, I'm not sure this is the best idea ... I mean ... I'm thrilled, but even I know that Mirage can't bond with someone who is lower ranked than he is. It will be torture on his coding, and ... he won't not be happy, sir. I couldn't stand being the source of my bondmate's unhappiness.::

::Are ya tryin' t' get me to defect back t' Megs, 'cause I have t' tell ya, even he aint this messed up in the processors. Maybe ya need t' have Ratchet take a look, Prime, 'cause there aint no way the Matrix would put me with that ... that ... tight aft, rule bound, meddlin' drone. If this is yer idea of a joke, ya need t' get a new humor subroutine, 'cause it aint funny!::

::May I be excused to get medbay ready to salvage the parts that will be left over when this finally settles down.::

::Wow, Prime, if you don't mind me saying to, those are some bold choices. I thought Ratchet and I were an explosive combination! Don't mind me, I'm going to just sit here in my corner and watch for a bit. I've always enjoyed combustion.::

Optimus serenely regarded them all, his battlemask up, only his optics betraying any emotion, which at this moment, was perfect confidence in what he had pronounced. He let each mech have his say, and responded only with a calm acknowledgement that he had received their transmission.

Mirage was the only one in the room who was not bombarding the closed channels. The chatter, accusations, sarcasm, confusion and outright anger came to a swift stop when the noble suddenly stood, his entire field fluctuating in suppressed emotion. Despite it, he gave an elegant bow.

"My Lord Prime," he began, his voice static-filled and even more formal than normal. "Permission to be dismissed for patrol."

"You are not scheduled for patrol duty until 2nd watch tomorrow," Prowl noted.

"Shu, mech, let 'm go," Jazz said softly, raising his visor to look at the spy, his blue optics full of concern.

"Mirage, be back on base by first watch, and do not engage any Decepticons on your own. I want you to report to me as soon as you return," Prime's voice carried the weight of the order in a tone that only a rare mech could resist. The voice itself seemed to settle Mirage on a level. The Alpha stood straight and proud, and nodded his head in acceptance.

"I will report to you at first watch, my Lord Prime, and I will not engage any enemy." He gave another bow before adding in a darker tone, "Provided they do not engage me first."

"Do not provoke that attack, Mirage," Prime warned as he stood and walked over to the still slightly trembling frame and placed his hands on the elegant blue and white mech's shoulders. "It is important that you come back in one piece. You must trust me."

The un-Alpha like intimacy of the touch was too much for the spy. There was a collective gasp of vents as he tore himself away from Optimus's large hands with a pained keen and literally launched himself into his alt form, fleeing from the chamber. Prowl and Ratchet's chevrons both raised in shocked surprise, knowing the depth of coding-conflict such deliberate defiance must have caused the Alpha.

"Well, that went well,"

Jazz grumbled, sliding from the corner of Prime's desk to the floor with a gust of air from his vents.

"He simply needs some time to adjust to the idea," Prime said sadly. "Hound, your spark is as noble as any Alpha's. Give him time to adjust his coding."

"That's rather optimistic, Prime," Jazz objected. "There's only one mech Mirage's codin' will allow himself t' feel right 'bout bondin' with. Ya merged with him. Ya have t' know he volunteered for this believin' he'd be bondin' with you 'cause it's his sparkright. He was built for ya, for Primus-sake. He believed with his whole spark the Matrix would agree."

Prime frowned, rubbing his forehelm thoughtfully. "I am well aware of what Mirage believed would happen. The Matrix was unequivocal about this. Mirage must bond with Hound, not only for the sake of those they will kindle, but for the sake of our society. The Alphas are no more. _All_ are Alphas now, and having the first of the bondings be between a high ranked Alpha and a working-caste mech will secure that in every mech's processors. Every spark from Primus is noble, and our coding must adjust. Otherwise, Megatron is correct about us; we are simply relics from a past that no longer has the right to function."

"That's a real spark, out there," Jazz snapped, "with codin' conflicts deeper than the sonic canyons. No matter what he was built for, ya have no right just t' use him t' make a cultural point."

"Jazz, you agreed this was a good plan," Optimus began.

"I agreed this was a good plan when it was about creatin' new life, creatin' a reason for us t' fight a losin' battle, mech!" Jazz hissed, his engine revving in anger. He turned toward the door, and stopped at its closed threshold. "I didn't agree t' see mechs forced together who are gonna make the other miserable for the rest of their functionin' - ya picked the _one_ mech for Hound even he couldn't make happy! All ya had t' do was pick someone higher ranked than 'Raj, didn't even have to be an Alpha. Prowl or me or any one of the seniors would've settled his codin' and he'd be fine!"

"Where are you going, Jazz?" Optimus asked patiently, compassion and far too much understand reflected in the optics Jazz refused to meet.

"I'm gonna follow my SIC, make sure he doesn't do anything t' extinguish his spark. I'm the only one who can follow 'im without 'im knowin'."

"You have not been dismissed..." Prowl began.

"Rust you, Prowl! Don't ya start with me!" the saboteur growled, his optics flashing their former red before his visor slid back into place with cold finality. He stalked out of Prime's office, leaving a stunned silence in his wake. They had all witnessed many surprises from the former Decepticon over the vorns, but never had watched him tell off his Prime ... at least not in front of others.

Attention then turned to Hound, who looked absolutely stricken, his armor compressed and field radiating distress, clearly wishing he were anywhere but in that particular office with its current company.

"Hound," Optimus began, "please do not take Jazz's outburst to spark. It was far more about his anger at the matrix's choice for himself than it was about Mirage."

"That may be true, but Jazz is right, sir," Hound said, sinking lower in his seat. "I can't process this working. I'm not gonna force myself on someone who'll be miserable 'cause of me, no matter how much I might want to create and mentor. I worked among Alphas for most of my functioning before the war. He'll do this because you order it, because that is what he's coded to do, but every orn will feel like an offense to his very spark. He has no more control over that than I have over my guardian coding."

"Not necessarily," Wheeljack spoke up, walking over to kneel next to the scout's chair, placing a hand on the thick green arm. "We Alphas have quite a bit more control over our core code than many let on. There is an inherent flexibility that comes with being kindled as a sparkling, even if most of us failed to recognize just how helpful that flexibility could be before it was too late."

"Mirage can change the subroutines that will object to the bond," the engineer continued in a tone that was optimism personified. "He is just going to be stubborn about it. More than any of us survivors, he grieves the loss not just of his clade, but Alpha culture itself. Simply being an Autobot, being anything other than the consort and aid to Prime, or another high placed mech, would conflict with his Alpha code, yet he functions as Prime's premier spy every orn, believes it is the will of Primus and the right thing to do. He rewrote his code to allow that. You and Prime can convince him of this, too. Give him some time to sort out his emotions, to sort out what is code and what is spark. You'll be good for him, help him let go of things that he's got to let go if he's ever going to do more than simply function."

Prime hid a smile behind his mask, not only at the engineer's sensitive and perceptive words, but also at the surprised look on Ratchet's faceplates as he noticed, perhaps for the first time, that Wheeljack was something more than an annoying nuisance who used up far too many of his precious supplies.

Hound, meanwhile, had straightened at the engineer's words, his armor flaring slightly in pride. "I suppose that _is_ possible," he admitted. "It makes sense, considering what I know of Alpha sparklings. Before they upgraded into their mechling frames and got their adult code, they were surprisingly flexible and creative about things."

Wheeljack nodded, leaning in closer as though he were revealing a secret to Hound alone. "It is a miserable, pit-spawned upgrade; so miserable that a few of us figured out ways around it and never had the adult Alpha code integrated into our systems," his finials flashed yellow with amusement. "Why don't you come back to my lab for a cube, and I'll tell you a few more secrets about the Alphas that will help you out with him."

Hound looked eagerly to Prime for permission and received a nod in response. "Hound, I will summon you again after I have had a chance to speak alone with Mirage. Wheeljack is correct, and the Matrix concurs. You _will_ be good for Mirage, and he will be good for you. I commend your patience and understanding as he sorts that out."

"Of course, sir!" Hound said warmly, his hopeful demeanor returning full force as he followed Wheeljack out the door.

It left only Ratchet and Prowl. The former was staring thoughtfully at the door that had just closed, his optics betraying his confusion and surprise at the engineer's behavior. The second was sitting with his usual stiff formality, as though this were any other staff meeting, and not one that threatened to drive his entire functioning to the pit.

After a few awkward nanokliks, Ratchet stood. "Well, I think I'll check on Hide. Those Matrix-merges can really take their toll. You sure you're feeling alright, Prime?"

"I am quite well. Please, check on Ironhide," Prime said softly, his optics locked on Prowl as the red and white mech left through the door that led to Prime's quarters rather than the corridor.

As soon as the the door slid shut, Prowl slumped in his seat, his sensor wings drooping and trembling with suppressed emotions that could finally be revealed now that he was alone with his Prime. Optimus stood, walked around his desk, and retracted his battle mask as he knelt, much like Wheeljack had done with Hound, to be optic level with his executive officer. "Say it," he commanded with a resonance that went right through his SIC's frame to his spark.

"Why?" came Prowl's static-filled hiss, laden with more emotion than any mech on base save Optimus knew he was even capable of. "Why would you do this to me," he said louder, stunned betrayal in his tone.

"Prowl," Optimus said gently, the designation expressing more than any other words could of just how much he cared for and respected the mech in front of him.

"I kept my promise, Prime," Prowl continued, sensor panels and chevron twitching in agitation. "I never told anyone what I knew. I've worked with him as you asked, and have never done a thing to compromise the trust that others have in him. But how could you ask _this_? Of me? When you know what it costs me simply to function on the same base as him without taking his spark."

Optimus reached out and put one hand on his SIC's, picking it up and stroking it with a level of physical intimacy that would have shocked the Alphas who were no longer functioning to keep their Prime in line. Prowl stiffened and pulled his own hand back, pushing himself away from the massive mech and standing, his sensor wings moving with more agitation than Prime had ever seen.

"I don't _need_ another youngling to mentor, Prime. Bluestreak may have upgraded to mechling, but he still clings to me as much as he did when I found him. And you would ask me to _bond_...to _kindle_ with one of the mechs responsible for infiltrating - How could you?" he growled, his battle subroutines roaring online in rage, a shocking charge rushing his systems that stunned him with its intensity, surging through his logic center and shorting it out as he collapsed into Prime's ready arms. Ratchet immediately entered, having gone no further than the other side of the door at Prime's silent order, and helped settle the Praxian on the floor.

"His logic completely fails him when it comes to that mech," Ratchet said quietly.

"With good reason," Prime quietly responded, his mask up once again to hide his worried frown.


	5. Prime Directive

**Title**: Arranged by the Stars  
><strong>Chapter Title<strong>: Chapter 5 _Prime Directive_  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: G1 AU  
><strong>Author<strong>: femme4jack  
><strong>Pairing<strong>: Jazz/Prowl  
><strong>Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: Slash (mech/mech), arranged sparkbonds, lots of liberties with G1 canon history, robot reproduction (not mechpreg), possibly sensitive discussion regarding paraplegia, genitalia, and sexuality.  
><strong>Summary<strong>: A break from the angst. Chip has some questions of his own for Prowl.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: Written for the April 2011 challenge at the prowlxjazz community on livejournal. Many thanks to Fierceawakening for her help with this chapter. Warning has been changed to robot reproduction (non mechpreg) to more accurately reflect content.  
>::Text:: Comm chatter<br>~text~ sparkbond talk Vorn - 83 years

_To my fanfiction . net readers. I changed the names on my chapters, which led a couple of readers to believe that the last chapter I posted (Fireworks) was actually a repost since originally ch. 3 had that name. It was a new chapter, so you'll want to read it before this one. Thank you so much to everyone who has been reviewing! You are all so kind, and really are encouraging me to continue this. Feedback is a wonderful motivator for my muses. If you are reviewing anonymously (not signed in) and would like a response, please consider leaving the review on my fiction journal, which is linked on my profile page._

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><p>Arranged by the Stars 5: Prime Directive<p>

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><p><em>The Ark, Mount Saint Hillary, 1986<br>_

"Hey Prowl," the young, and, for a human, brilliant teen rolled into the SIC's office with all the natural grace of someone who had been created with wheels. Myelomeningocele may have left him paralyzed from the waist down, but to the Autobots, Chip's ability to gracefully and, sometimes recklessly, navigate any surface with his wheelchair looked like an advantage rather than a disability.

"Hello to you as well, Chip. What may I do for you today," Prowl deliberately set his datapad down on the large desk covered with neat, precisely organized stacks of the same and focused his optics on the teen.

"Smokescreen asked me to deliver a report to you." Chip gestured to the datapad balanced across the arms of his chair, strapped on by the glowing Cybertronian equivalent of a bungee chord. "Well, actually, I offered. I wanted to ask you some about something...if you don't mind, that is."

Prowl knelt and offered a nearly there smile to the human as he dissipated the energy strap and subspaced the datapad for later perusal. If Smokescreen had allowed an organic to deliver it, the contents were not an urgent matter. The former enforcer valued the human allies on base, most especially the one currently in his office, and he made sure to give the appearance of his full attention to the youth, even if most of his processors remained engaged with the calculations, reports, and communications involved in his role as executive officer. If pressed, he would admit that the clever organic sent a pleasant hum through his kindling subroutines and activated memory files of the sparklings he and Jazz had created and mentored over the vorns - sparklings who were now all fully upgraded mechs. It wasn't simply Chip's vulnerable size, or the fact that the boy's wheelchair was oddly reminiscent of the simple alt forms sparklings were given at their initial upgrade; it was Chip's innate empathy, innocent yet relentless curiosity, and the lack of any sense of self preservation that truly called sparklings to his active processors.

Prowl gave no consideration to suppressing his mentor coding around the boy, no more than he would have considered suppressing it when Bluestreak began trailing him around over 78,000 vorns ago. (78,927.501 his battle computer supplied helpfully.)

"It would be convenient for me to give you 30 minutes for your questions now, if you wish, Chip, and at 19:30 I am available again, if you wish to continue the conversation, or play chess as we normally do on Fridays," Prowl offered in a slightly warmer version of his usual monotone as he lifted the teen's wheelchair onto his desk. He watching attentively as Chip locked the wheels, and then offering his finger's as handholds as the human slid from the chair to a couch that Prowl had pulled out of his bottom desk drawer.

"Hey, like the new couch!" the human noted with a pleased tone. "This is much better than the chair you used to have."

"I am pleased to have a reason to provide more comfortable furnishings, Chip. Before you, few of the humans on base have found reason to spend much time in my office. I saw the couch at a charity rummage sale for the State Patrol when I was in Portland with Optimus Prime yesterday. My scans concurred with the sign that said it was nearly new and came from a pet-free household, and Prime was happy to offer his trailer for its transport" Prowl explained, gratified that the human furniture met with Chip's approval.

"Wow...cool, Prowl! Thanks...I mean ... you even remembered that I'm allergic to cats, though First Aid has some ideas about hypnotherapy that he thinks might help with that." Prowl noted with amusement that the human had begun to babble, not that differently than Bluestreak did. Chip's face warmed, which Prowl inferred to be a physical manifestation of the fact that the organic had a slight case of what Jazz called 'hero worship'. It did not bother the tactician in the least. It was natural for the young to admire their elders, especially those who took a distinct interest in them. Prowl found taking an interest in the youngling human a most pleasant past time.

The teen began exhibiting signs of nervousness, wringing his hands as he made small talk about First Aid's latest forays into human alternative medicine, so the tactician had compassion on his awkwardness and started the conversation for him, with a more neutral topic than what there was a 92.063% probability Chip had come to discuss.

"How is you project progressing, Chip?" the SIC asked, resting his arms on his desk in a far more relaxed pose than he normally used, allowing his optics to be closer to the human's own level.

Chip grinned and immediately relaxed. "Awesome. I've completed my second go around on the schematics, and Wheeljack's reviewing them and is meeting with me this afternoon for some pointers. First Aid is helping me a bit to work out the bugs on the interface between the implants and my nervous system. I know it would all go a lot faster if the science mechs did the whole thing on their own, but I'm glad I'm the one figuring it out. I'm learning so much more this way."

"With the added benefit that you can legally use the knowledge you gain in the process when you start your own cybernetic implant company," Prowl added, feeling pride in what the human was accomplishing. "Your research will make a difference to your species, Chip."

When Chip had become a regular presence on the Ark, practically living with the Witwickys, a discussion that had once been theoretical had come to a head among those who worked regularly among the organics. They were all too aware of the impact they were having on human cultural evolution simply be being in their midst. Ratchet and First Aid, thanks to their medic core coding, felt compelled to help human beings advance in their medical theories and technology, especially when it came to using cybernetic and nanotech to ease human suffering. At the same time, the Autobot oath protecting the freedom of sentient life also meant protecting from undue interference. Humanity was on the cusp of so many advances, and yet was also standing at the abyss of extinction within the next few hundred vorns if something didn't change. Prime and his first and second lieutenants were all in agreement that while they had a responsibility to save humanity from the Decepticons, they did not have the same mandate to save humanity from itself. At the same time, there were simple things, well within humanity's scientific grasp, that could make such a huge difference for the species and its planet. In the end, they opted to give gentle, and sometimes more pointed nudges in the right direction, especially in the area of energy production, which in its current form was the greatest risk to their survival, and the survival of many other species on the planet.

Then Chip had become their friend, and they were faced with first hand evidence of the genetic defect that led to a spinal tube remaining open at birth, with no amount of surgery able to give the young man use of his lower body. Even moreso than Sparkplug's all too obvious heart condition (which at least he could control with diet and exercise), Chip's genetic condition challenged their non-interference policies more than anything had thus far. Creating cybernetic implants for Chip would have taken Ratchet and Wheeljack an earth day, at most. It was simple, and a medic would never leave a fellow sentient without the use of his limbs.

The arguments during their staff meetings had been heated. Ratchet even went against orders and made the implants, intending to hand them quietly over to Chip's human physician. Prowl had discovered this and confiscated them.

"None of you has asked Chip about his own wishes," the SIC had said in his calm monotone during one of those heated debates. "Aside from the ethical issues this raises regarding why we would help our friends, but not many who have far fewer resources at their disposal, Chip is a sentient being who would likely understand the issues at hand and may not appreciate our making these kind of decisions behind his back. Aside from this, we've all agreed that his dexterity with his chair makes him, on many levels, more mobile that his supposedly non-disabled counterparts."

"And when that chair is taken from him, destroyed, damaged? He is at much greater danger than the general population, simply being among us. To have him at any disadvantage when it comes to fleeing from the Decepticons..." Ratchet began his normal tirade.

"You are correct, he is at greater risk because he is helping us, which is why I propose that we allow him to help himself, _if_ he wishes to," Prowl explained.

That conversation had led to Chip's current project: studying human cybernetic engineering with Wheeljack. Using human technology and a few of those 'nudges' in the right direction, Chip Chase was creating his own implants, and the resulting technology would be ground breaking (and likely make the human very wealthy). Wheeljack, for his part, was enjoying the challenge of helping to create something truly brilliant with such poor materials and technological limitations. It was like asking a master architect to teach a person from the stone age to build a skyscraper, using only the stone tools and knowledge available at the time.

"What have you decided regarding means of locomotion," Prowl asked the human who was relaxing on the couch. The SIC was inwardly amused with himself at the fact that he would miss the wheels.

"That's been the toughest part - deciding how I want to get around. I never could walk, so it seems totally unnatural to me. But I get that there are some situations where being able to walk, run or jump makes sense. If I didn't have to worry about how others would look at me, or the fact that I'd really like to date, I'd just find a way to integrate my lower body into something with wheels, or maybe a track system of some sort so I could get up and down stairs and uneven surfaces. But I need to keep it looking more human than that."

Prowl nodded, encouraging the teen to continue, though his processors were 'helpfully' supplying him with far too many images of Chip in sparkling alt form mode which Jazz would have described as adorable, not that Prowl would use such a condescending word to describe his organic friend.

"Here, let me show you," Chip said enthusiastically, pulling a human-sized data pad out of the bag hanging off the back of his chair and handing it to Prowl, who picked it up carefully between his fingers. Optimus had made _some_ allowances when it came to sharing their technology with their closest allies, for their own sake and the sake of the trees it saved. Data pads in their size were one such tool.

Prowl plugged into the pad and downloaded the newest set of schematics. They were, obviously, primitive from a Cybertronian perspective, but from the perspective of human cyber-engineering, they were elegant and creative. Chip had designed implants that would mimic the appearance of human legs, though they were not limited to human-style locomotion. The calf portion could fold into a wheeled section that would enable Chip to move with the same natural grace he had with his chair. When bipedal, Chip would be able to run and jump at approximately 175% the efficiency of the human median. Prowl examined the schematics in detail, and could observe some of the changes that Wheeljack would suggest, but was, nevertheless, impressed, and secretly very pleased about the wheels.

"These will give you a number of advantages over your current form of locomotion, and over that which other humans use," Prowl noted, a pleased warmth running through his emotional processors at the expression on Chip's face that came with his assessment. "I believe Wheeljack will only suggest a few revisions to the transformation sequence, though I do not have the engineering coding he has has, obviously."

Prowl examined another portion of the schematics, and his sensor panel gave a slight twitch. Chip's genitalia were among the parts of his body affected by his paraplegia. Prowl knew, thanks to Ratchet's all too invasive scans, that the teen had some genital sensations, but was not able to have what was considered a "healthy" human erection. While the implants would correct the excretory difficulties that came with his paralysis, Chip had not included implants that would allow him to attain sexual climax, at least in the form that most humans considered normal and desirable. This was incongruous with his earlier statement about desiring to date. He debated asking the human about the fact, but calculated that the human would feel uncomfortable with the question coming from him. He would likely respond better to an innocent inquiry from Wheeljack while they were revising the schematics, whom everyone expected to ask embarrassing questions about human sexuality. He pinged Wheeljack with a priority message that he bring the issue up with the boy before the implants went into fabrication mode.

Perhaps, Prowl mused, Chip preferred to experience pleasure in manners other than the typical human sexual response, which was by no means unusual for his species. His mentor coding, however, was rather insistent that Chip have access to the widest range of experiences possible as he formed his preferences and personality matrix, so he wanted to make sure the question at least was asked. Chip obviously had the skill to design implants that would provide the necessary sensations for himself and stimulation for a partner if he desired such experiences.

"Jack's being good, though," Chip responded with a chuckle, completely unaware of the black and white mech's processing which had taken an imperceptible amount of time to the human. "He wishes I could access subspace because of the options it would open up in terms of superhuman height, armor, and all sorts of other amazing things, but he has only made suggestions and pointed out things I'm missing."

Prowl nodded in agreement. "It is not easy for some of my colleagues to stop themselves when it comes to sharing our knowledge, but, your favorite science fiction show has it correct:It is better for people to figure things out on their own. It is, rather ironic, that Mr. Spock refers to it as the 'Prime Directive,' is it not?"

Chip giggled a the joke. "Don't ever let anyone tell you that you have no sense of humor Prowl," he said warmly, taking back the data pad Prowl carefully handed to him and reaching over to his chair to put it back in his bag.

"They tell me that an average of 3.86 times each day, Chip," Prowl responded, giving the human one of his rare, genuine smiles. "Sunstreaker and Sideswipe have skewed that data, however, though Jazz makes up for it by reminding me that I have a warped sense of humor on a regular basis," he added, purposefully naming his bondmate to allow Chip to proceed with his questions. "Now, what is it you wanted to ask me?"

Chip blushed, but did not look down, which pleased Prowl. While he certainly was no expert on human behavior the way Jazz was, he had given a strong effort to make sure this particular human was comfortable around him and not embarrassed of his own natural curiosity.

"Well...it's about Jazz, actually. Ratchet gave me that whole lecture on how some of you guys are together, and how that...works...and stuff. And I sort of guessed that you and Jazz had been a whole opposites attract sort of thing. It happens with humans, too. But Spike told me that...that Optimus made you get married, or something like that, and that you had hated each other."

Prowl appeared to be considering the comment, though he already had been well prepared for the conversation. "Our relationship is much deeper than a marriage, Chip, though I'm not faulting that type of contract. Over the vorns, the bonding of our sparks changed both of us in fundamental ways. We each have absorbed some of the the spark energy of the other within our own, affecting our sparks on a subatomic leval. Because of our bond, we know and understand each other as perfectly as two sentient beings are able to, at least by our calculations. But Spike is correct that we initially bonded at our Prime's suggestion, and that we both accepted his suggestion as an order, even though we had a choice. It was easier for both of us to view it as something we had been ordered to do."

"But why...did you hate each other? And why would Prime make two people who hated each other do that? it seems...almost cruel." Chip's eyes moved nervously. It was hard, even for an organic, for someone who had been in Prime's presence and felt his charisma to criticize the mech who literally was an avatar of their own god. Optimus Prime had a presence that instilled loyalty and confidence that went beyond his own species.

"At the time, Jazz and I would have agreed that it was cruel for him to match us in an arranged bonding, knowing that both of us were far too loyal to say no to him or to the Matrix of Leadership." Prowl concurred easily. "But our hatred of one anther...was complicated, and based, in part, on a deep mistrust between us that needed to be overcome for the good of all Cybertronians, as well as our the wellbeing of our own sparks. It took time, but Jazz and I came to see, just as Prime did, that our bonding was essential not only for the Autobots, but for ourselves."

"But...do you love one another?" Chip asked in a small voice, almost like a child learning that some mythical figure he had put his faith in did not actually exist."

Prowl's soft smile in response to the question was genuine. "Yes, Chip. One cannot become as close to one another as Jazz and I are and not love the other deeply and unconditionally. Jazz's spark is more important to me than my own. But love like that does not happen fast. It takes time to grow. In our case, it took many vorns for us to fully trust one another and even begin to truly love each other, even after we bonded."

The relief on the human's face was, to use Jazz's word again, adorable, and Prowl once again had to firmly shut down his kindling protocols and resist the temptation to call the head of Special Ops to join him in medbay for an 'emergency meeting' next to the incubation vat.

"So ... Spike also said that Prime arranged bonds for some of you ... so you could create ... kids?"

Prowl chuckled. "I am sure the revelation that there is more to making a new Transformer than putting together the right components came as a bit of a surprise. To answer your question, yes, that was a primary purpose in our arranged bonding. Our sparks are highly compatible when it comes to kindling new ones, and without the key to Vector Sigma, it was the only way for us to continue as a species. But the process is quite different from what you might imagine based on human reproduction, and does not, for us, involve pregnancy."

Chip looked supremely relieved at that statement and pointedly did not ask about the details. "So...which ones are yours? I mean ... the thought of Sunstreaker and Sideswipe being your kids just makes my brain hurt."

Prowl chuckled warmly before setting his features in a more serious expression. "Unfortunately, Chip, our regulations do not permit me to tell you that. When we first began experimenting with creating sparks without Vector Sigma, we agreed that all of the sparklings would look to all mechs with appropriate guardian, creator, or mentor coding, and we all took our turns acting as mentors and guardians to the various sparklings we created. It cemented our group of disparate cadres, classes, and cities into one large extended family, as you humans might call it. While the mechs in question know who created their sparks, they have had many mentors over the vorns. We have never wanted to give the Decepticons an excuse to target specific mechs because they are Jazz or my creations, or the creations of other high ranking officers."

"Which means now I'm going to be guessing about every mech I see," Chip laughed. "But wait a sec...Jazz offered to tell Spike."

"Ah, knowing Jazz as well as I do, I would surmise that he was simply attempting to provoke Spike into making guesses. Jazz would be entertained by the human logic you might put to use in such guessing." Prowl made a note to himself to discuss with his bondmate whether he had been appropriately sensitive to Spike's age and maturity regarding such matters.

Chip sighed dramatically. "All right. I guess this means I can't ask you if Bluestreak is your's? The resemblance and all?"

Prowl chuckled again and held out his hand to assist Chip back into his chair. "Well, in the case of Bluestreak, I can tell you without breaking any of our regulations: he is not my creation, nor is he the creation of any mech on the Ark. He came to live among us after his city was destroyed. I was sparked as an enforcer in that same city, and became a mentor of sorts for him. When it came time for him to upgrade to his adult frame, he chose the traditional design of a Praxian enforcer, like myself and Smokescreen, rather than that of his own clade, as a way to show his appreciation for our friendship, and I was very honored by it."

"Oh, that's really cool," Chip said with his natural enthusiasm, using Prowl's finger for leverage to move back into his wheelchair.

Once Chip was securely seated, Prowl lifted his chair carefully to the ground and knelt in front him.

"Thanks Prowl. I hope my questions weren't too personal," the teen said, suddenly a bit shy.

"It was my pleasure. Will you be by this evening for our weekly chess game?" Prowl asked with polite formality.

"Wouldn't miss it, Prowl," the young human said brightly before turning to roll agilely out the door.

In the privacy of his own office, Prowl allowed the warm, slightly wistful expression to display on his faceplates and in the movement of his sensor panels as he kept a sensor on the human teen making his way toward Wheeljack's lab. He then vented at himself with amusement and pulled the datapad out of subspace. As he read the contents, his sensor wings began to twitch, and the temperature of the room increased by several degrees. With a rev of his engine, he reached out to his bonded's spark.

~I require your presence in my office, Jazz,~ he said in a tone thick with amusement and arousal.~

~Ah, Smokey sent ya my note, did he?~ his lover purred into his spark. ~Did he use the proper messenger?~

~You are conspiring to have me spend more time with the human because you know he activates my kindling protocols. I though I was the master tactician,~ Prowl answered dryly even as his cooling fans switched on in anticipation.

The door to his office slid open, and Jazz sauntered in, plugged into the lock control mechanism and loaded it with a virus only he would be able to disable, then turned back toward his bondmate with a wicked grin. "I know how t' plan and conspire when I need t' rouse ya, lover. What grade do ya give my tactics?"

Prowl's only answer to that was a growl and a pounce that left Jazz pinned to the door he had just disabled.


	6. Predators

**Title**: Arranged by the Stars  
><strong>Chapter Title<strong>: Chapter 6 _Predators_  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: G1 AU  
><strong>Author<strong>: femme4jack  
><strong>Pairing<strong>: past Jazz/Mirage, past Jazz/Prime, past Jazz/everyone, future Jazz/Prowl, future Hound/Mirage  
><strong>Rating<strong>: R  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: Violence, arranged sparkbonds, lots of liberties with G1 canon history, references robot reproduction (merges leading to budded spark, incubated outside of frame)  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Jazz avoids dealing with his own issues by having a chat, spec-ops style, with Mirage, to figure out how to make the coming bond work for the spy.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: Written for the April 2011 challenge at the prowlxjazz community on livejournal.  
>klik = 1.2 minutes; breem = 8.3 minutes; joor = 6.92 hours; orn = Cybertronian day32 joor/9.22 earth days; vorn = Cybertronian year/83 earth-years  
>::Text:: Comm chatter<p>

* * *

><p><strong>Arranged by the Stars 6: Predators<strong>

* * *

><p><em>Outside of Iacon, approximately 6-million years ago<em>

Jazz was one of two living mechs who knew how to sense Mirage when he was under the cloak of his pattern disrupter, a technology that, aside from the master spy, had been lost with the Towers. No amount of research on the Alpha's systems allowed their engineers to replicate the special ability his finely crafted tower nanites had for deflecting not only sensor scans, but visible light. Like so much Alpha code, those nanites could not be duplicated outside of his own systems unless Mirage bonded and kindled. That his systems developed the ability on their own in an incubation vat was an extraordinary testament to the process by which the Alphas created new mechs. Mirage's initial protoform - little more than a spark chamber, had, like all other Alphas, been placed in the vat for a metacycle, along with cultures of his creators' nanites and coding related to his intended function. His nanites and spark did the rest when it came to forming a sparkling protoform, frame and core code. Had the Towers survived long enough for Mirage to be formally offered to them, the highest ranking Alphas would have found his cloaking ability quite valuable when it came to spying on servants, allies, or other clade members. The same thing that made Mirage's ability attractive to a potential high ranked bondmate also made him invaluable to the Autobots.

The other mech who knew how to find Mirage was the same one whom Prime planned to have the Alpha bond with. Hound was one of several scouts who reported directly to the the commander of Special Operations, and was the one responsible for rendezvousing with Mirage when things went well, or retrieving him, if possible, if they did not. On missions, Mirage would slip out from his cloak when he could and tap directly into Hound's powerful sensor suite to provide him with information his own formidable sensors could not. They had an outstanding professional partnership.

Mirage never spoke a word to the scout outside of missions or briefings.

Jazz knew that Hound accepted it. The ability to understand the spark and core coding of others was basic to the scout's nature. More importantly, so was the patience not take offense, even when offense was intended. The former guardian of precious Alpha creations and hunt-master for noble clades had a gift for finding what was best in those around him and drawing it out.

Jazz was well aware that Hound had never been able to draw out Mirage, and had not pushed. It would not have been welcome, and Hound respected the spy far too much to make the attempt.

The dynamics were fascinating. By old Cybertronian standards, Jazz was little better than an empty. While well constructed by a mercenary clade in Polyhex, when a rival clade had taken out his creators and nearly every other member of his clade, he had ended up sketching out an existence by the smelting pits of the Dead End where he honed his coded skills in the furnace of survival. Hound, as a valuable and highly placed Alpha servant, clearly had his commander outranked according to the complex system of caste, clade and function that had once determined a mech's position and possibilities prior to the war. Yet, now Jazz was one of Prime's senior officers, and according to Mirage's coding revisions, an acceptable bondmate. Hound was not, and considering Hound did not have the code or spark for command, he never would be.

The black and white saboteur wasn't certain which was the greater source of his fury: that Prime was "asking" one of the kindest-sparked mechs in Iacon to bond with the one being on base who would be completely indifferent best, and would more likely despise him, or that Prime had shown so little respect for what remained of Mirage's Alpha coding and heritage. As if it weren't enough for Mirage to lose his entire clade, his home, the comfort of fulfilling his coded purpose, now Prime was asking for a revision to what remained of the Alpha's core code so he could bond to someone who did not have the right to command him.

It was darkly amusing to the saboteur that he actually gave a slag about Mirage's conflicted coding. The Alphas, with their hardwired notions of social order and control, had held Cybertron in a stranglehold that had not allowed mechs to rise above their own origins. It had driven many mechs, Jazz included, to Megatron's cause in the beginning, when the Autobots had seemed like the armed protectors of all that was wrong with Cybertron. But now Mirage was, in essence, part of Jazz's own clade, an elite on the Special Operations team.

Jazz protected his own.

Hound was part of that group as well, and pit if Jazz was going to see his mechs miserable. The problem was, the only thing that would fix this would be for Prime to change his mind, which was unlikely, or for Mirage to rewrite what remained of his Alpha consort coding and lose his primary function altogether. It would be akin to asking Jazz to reprogram himself to no longer be a saboteur, or Hound to rid himself of his guardian or tracking code.

Jazz mused on the issues from the shadows, watching as the spy made his way into a small Deception encampment in a slagged valley that stretched out to the east from Iacon. While the spy would not show up on the 'Cons' sensors, provided Mirage kept everything running low and his disrupter field up, the enemy had gotten wise over the vorns. They had security systems of their own that could disrupt Mirage's cloak, and those systems were becoming ever-more sophisticated. In addition, Mirage could not transmit, use subspace, or power up any weapons systems under his field.

After the fall of the Towers, there had been Alphas who had taken their own sparks rather than accepting a life in the new reality in which their rank and status no longer accorded them any privilege. Even among the Autobots, mechs' skills rather than their social origins were what mattered. With the fall of their civilization, being an Alpha no longer meant a thing, though, interestingly, being a Prime still meant everything.

Mirage had been one of the few who'd been able to make the transition, though at high cost to himself. Those from the science clades had a far easier time with the transition thanks to their innate logic and creativity. Sadly, the Alpha scientists had also been primary Decepticon targets, leaving only Wheeljack and Perceptor as known survivors.

Mirage's flexibility was not a function of scientific logic, but rather his consort coding which could literally adjust his frame and personality matrix to the needs and desires of whatever mech his clade decided to offer him to. However, even if the survivor were unlikely to take his own spark, it didn't mean that the rage and coding conflict the spy was experiencing didn't need an outlet, and there was no better outlet than the graceful violence of blades running through the sparks of their enemies. Jazz knew what his spy was up to. Mirage would not go against Prime's orders and 'provoke' an attack, but that didn't mean he was beyond 'accidentally' tripping one of the security sensors and then taking on the small patrol to vent his turmoil.

This was why Jazz had followed him, just beyond the range of the sensors that were inhibited out of necessity for spy's pattern disruptor. This was also why Jazz had already disabled the Decepticons' security perimeter. Normally, the spy would not require assistance with such a small patrol, but Mirage was not himself, and coding conflicts led to mistakes. Jazz couldn't afford to see his top spy make a mistake. He watched knowingly as Mirage deliberately stepped on one of the sensors that should have disrupted his cloak. The Alpha froze when the expected alarm was not raised, and began to look around for the cause. Jazz briefly emerged from the shadows, and Mirage spotted his commander and made his way to where the Autobot phantom hid.

If Mirage was angry at the disruption to plans, he did not show it. He silently followed Jazz away from the encampment by a circuitous, secretive route for several breems until they reached a small cloaked pit that led to an underground passage. When both were inside, Mirage deactivated his pattern disrupter and faced his commander, head bowed, patiently awaiting the expected reprimand.

"It was a small patrol, mostly drones. Ya probably would've taken 'em easily," Jazz said in a nonchalant tone.

"Yes," Mirage replied quietly, in full agreement. "Will you report my disobedience to Prime?"

Jazz unsheathed his energon dagger, the favored weapon of his team, and appeared to be checking its settings. "Ya didn't disobey any orders, mech. Ya didn't provoke anything. 'Sides, now y're under my orders, and as soon as we've had a chat, we'll go take out their camp together."

Mirage's optics brightened and his faceplates suddenly bore a nearly feral grin as he took his own dagger out of a compartment on his thigh, lighting it with a flick of his elegant wrist and assuming a defensive pose for a chat, Special Operations style.

They circled with practiced familiarity, waiting for the right moment for the first strike. Jazz feinted first, then came in lightning fast from underneath only to be deflected by the spy's unmatchable reflexes before Mirage leaped away. They settled into a pattern of attacks and parries, testing the other's reflexes, weaknesses, and patterns, blades never touching the other's armor. In a fair fight, there were few mechs, if any, who could match Mirage with the blade, but they both knew it wasn't in Jazz's nature to fight fair. It was part of what these chats were all about. Someone unfamiliar with the ways of their unit would find Jazz's methods cruel, and they often were, but the former Decepticon also knew when a mech needed to explode and let off the pressure, and he knew how to provoke it. His "chats" served a similar, if more sinister purpose as the parties or pranks he planned and even his berth hopping. Jazz intimately knew the chaos that dwelled underneath their careful coding, the dangerous passion of their sparks. He knew, perhaps better than any other Autobot, that mechs needed outlets, whether in violence, interfacing, or laughter.

"So, guess ya think y're too good for us rust stains, huh?" he asked conversationally as he easily ducked to prevent Mirage's blade from shearing off his left sensor horn.

"I show respect for every mech who earns it, Hound included. He is an outstanding scout, and there isn't anyone aside from my commander whom I'd rather have at my back," Mirage responded reasonably, dispassionately analyzing his commander's attacks and defenses, searching for predictable patterns. Jazz fought differently every time they sparred, mixing and matching in a wide variety of styles of his own with those learned from others.

"But ya don't want 'im in your berth," Jazz chuckled. "Doesn't stop ya from joinin' me in mine whenever I ask. I always thought ya were turned on by slummin' it with me, letting a dead end mech touch your precious Alpha spark."

Jazz's optics brightened in excitement when the taunt got a growl from the spy. The Alpha was going to be easy to rile, which was good. The sooner he exploded, the sooner they could get him settled and figure out what do to. Mirage crouched and pounced, only to find Jazz squirming and twisting out from his grasp with only a scratch across the plating of his upper arm.

"What are ya afraid of, pretty?" Jazz sneered. "That he'll want more? That he'll want to touch ya, plug in an do all of those unspeakably unAlpha things t' that lovely frame? What makes ya think Prime or me woulda been any different? Prime used t'be lower ranked than Hound, and I can tell ya from experience, he wants t' feel more than a spark when he 'faces. He wants a mech t' get under his armor. Maybe that's why he didn't choose ya..."

It was all it took. Mirage exploded in rage and Jazz suddenly found himself using every ounce of strength to hold Mirage's dagger back from the seam in his chestplates as he was shoved hard into the wall of the tunnel, leaving chromonanites behind in a streak of black and white. Jazz kicked hard, causing the spy to stumble and scramble away, only to have Mirage turn and leap at him again, giving a triumphant electronic hiss as his energon blade actually took one of his commander's sensor horns before the Alpha scrambled out of reach. Jazz growled and sprang, and for the next several kliks, the tunnel appeared to be the site of a violent version of the tactile interfacing the Alpha class had so despised for its base, organic origins.

Somehow, Jazz managed to disarm the spy, throwing the dagger to the side along with his own as the battle became something far more feral. Mirage literally was tearing at his commander's chest plating with his bare hands, whether to kill or to merge with someone appropriately ranked, it wasn't clear. When Jazz could tell that Mirage's anger was nearly spent, he rolled them toward his own dagger, managed to grab it, and suddenly had it against the spy's main energon line that had become exposed in the fight.

"Yield, Alpha, that's an order," he growled, and Mirage instantly stopped, sanity returning to his optics. Neither said a word as they began sealing off the other's bleeding lines with cool efficiency, putting their plating to rights. Mirage picked up his commander's sheered off sensor horn and handed it to him contritely.

"Yeah, thanks a lot for that one, mech" Jazz said dryly, subspacing the horn. "I'll have to see the Hatchet, and he just loves when I have these little chats. Hurt like the pit, too."

"Forgive me," Mirage said with a formal bow. "I can probably reattach it for you, but Ratchet will still be able to tell. You managed not to scream."

"Shut off my vocal processors," Jazz admitted. "Usually do when I'm not taunting during a fight."

"Ah," the spy said, with a nod of understanding, pulling out a cloth to begin carefully wiping the energon off his commander's frame with the same non-sensual, yet practiced care his coding would have him show his future bonded.

Jazz didn't stop him. Mirage needed it. However the spy had managed it with his coding, he had convinced himself that Jazz was his superior, and treated him with the same subservience he might show a mech he had been offered to by his clade to evaluate for suitability. He was Jazz's spy, sent not to see if the servants were stealing energon or parts, but into Decepticon strongholds and, when necessary, among other Autobots when there was reason so suspect duplicity or concern about morale. As long as his code accepted Jazz as a potential bondmate, it was not as stretch for his protocols.

"So what do we do 'bout this slag?" Jazz finally asked when the beautiful, deadly mech had turned his attention to his own plating. "Do ya want me t' make it an order? Would that help?"

"I am not certain," Mirage admitted. "I am uncertain I can convince my coding that he is acceptable under any circumstance. Even if ordered to bond with him, I'm not certain my consort coding will allow me to make the necessary changes to allow it."

"It shoulda been Prime, or me at least. I would have been proud to have ya as my own, Mirage," Jazz said in a matter-of-fact tone. He didn't love the spy, or at least he didn't love him beyond the love he had for his entire team, but love was not required for a sparkbond to kindle.

"We must trust that Prime has his reasons," Mirage intoned like a youngling reciting his lessons from rote. "He is not intentionally cruel. The Matrix has access to wisdom older than even the original Alphas."

As much as Jazz wanted to argue the point, he knew that it was true. He would never have supported Prime's plan otherwise, even if he had failed to process the implications of just whom he might be asked to share sparks with...and that was a topic he could not even consider at the moment. It was easier to turn his processors toward the problem of his spy and his scout.

"What if ya weren't the one t' write the new code, Raj? Would that work? I could order ya for a reprogram, for the good of the unit. I know your code inside 'n out. I know what needs t' change, even if your own code won't let ya make the changes. It won't be fun - I'll have to break the firewalls 'round the code. But from a strategic standpoint, the two of ya bein' able to communicate 'cross a bond, with your disrupter shield still up...it'd be a huge advantage." Even as Jazz said it, he wondered if that was part of what the Matrix had in mind. Hound's Alpha-designed sensors could track a mech with a disruptor shield. He had tracked _Mirage_ as one of sparkling's own guardians when the Alpha had incubated the ability. Perhaps this was about more than just which sparks could successfully kindle, but also about strategic advantages in the war. That sent the saboteur's processors into a whole new direction when it came to whom the Matrix was assigning to him. Once again, he forcefully cut off that line of processing. He didn't want to go there yet.

Mirage was quiet, his optics offline for nearly a klik, likely examining his own code and running scenarios. When his optics relit and he spoke, his tone was devoid of any emotion. "Yes, I think that would work. I can't make the changes myself. The code won't allow it. But you have the authority over me to order it and break me, as does Prime. If you rewrite the coding, my protocols will allow me to bond with him."

Jazz nodded. "Consider it an order, then, Mirage, if that's what it's gonna take. I'm not gonna see either of ya any more miserable than this pit spawned war already makes us."

Mirage stood and bowed deeply to his commander, with nearly the subservience he showed to Prime. "Yes, my Lord," he said in a tone of reverent formality.

Jazz inclined his head, accepting the submission even as a House Lord would, but then froze, his sensors picking up activity just beyond the tunnel. With a wild grin and a flash of his visor, he motioned with his head toward the entrance of the tunnel. It seemed that the 'Con patrol must have picked up some of the sounds they had made while sparring, and had come to investigate. Without a word, the spy and saboteur ducked into the shadows to wait, both of their sparks pulsing with the excitement of predators on the hunt.


	7. The Chat

**Title**: Arranged by the Stars  
><strong>Chapter Title<strong>: Chapter 7 _The Chat_  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: G1 AU  
><strong>Author<strong>: femme4jack  
><strong>Pairing<strong>: Jazz/Prowl  
><strong>Rating<strong>: R  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: Violence, non explicit mech/mech (spark, PnP), arranged sparkbonds, lots of liberties with G1 canon history, references robot reproduction (not mechpreg)  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Jazz and Prowl finally have their chat, but will either one of them survive it, especially with Jazz intent on provoking Prowl the way he does his own team?  
><strong>Notes<strong>: Written for the April 2011 challenge at the prowlxjazz community on livejournal.  
>klik = 1.2 minutes; breem = 8.3 minutes; joor = 6.92 hours; orn = Cybertronian day32 joor/9.22 earth days; vorn = Cybertronian year/83 earth-years  
>::Text:: Comm chatter<br>Sorry this chapter took me so long! Prowl and Jazz were being very uncooperative, and none of us are entirely satisfied, but the show must go on.

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><p>Arranged by the Stars 7: The Chat<p>

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><p><em>Hardlight Training Room 3, Autobot Base Iacon, approximately 6-million years ago<em>

Even the majority of uninformed Autobots on base had a sense that all was not well in Iacon. It was as though some dark vapor had risen from the pit and descended on the city. Fights were breaking out between normally calm, steady mechs, and there were rumors of problems at the very top of the chain of command.

So when HoloTraining Room 3 was reserved for an entire orn, and the rooms on either side of it closed to all use, optic ridges were raised all over base, especially when a few sharp mechs put two and two together and noticed that both their Chief Tactical Officer and Commander of Special Operations were both taking a full orn off, something that only seemed to happen when one of them was placed on medical leave.

Prime made both mechs swear they would not endanger the other's spark or ability to function beyond minor repairs, but he did not make them promise not to fight. Optimus understood the passions that ran so deep in their kind, passions that needed release. They both made an oath to him while merged to his spark (for both comfort and assurance after joors of heated arguments). Neither were armed. Jazz even gave up the energon blades that were always hidden on his frame. While both were perfectly capable of killing the other in unarmed hand-to-hand, they both were, at spark, loyal to Optimus. They might have hated him at the moment, but they also trusted him more than they trusted their own sparks.

In the end, Prime had appealed to their egos.

"Are you trying to tell me there is actually an Autobot you can't lure to your berth, Jazz?" Prime had finally asked his commander of Special Operations. "One that even _you_ can't put at ease and get to open up, literally as well as figuratively? I know how you break mechs, and most of the time they don't even know they've been broken. Are you saying Prowl is beyond your skills?"

Then later on that same orn, in a separate conversation, Prime had entreated, "Prowl, you pride yourself on knowing every variable that could affect a mission or our overall goals. Yet you haven't even taken the basic steps in learning the variables that Jazz presents. Are you telling me that in this case, your logic processors and battle computer simply will not work?"

Which was why training room 3 was now reserved for the orn. Prowl had made the actual arrangements, sending a terse memo to Jazz to meet him there with high grade, which he knew the saboteur could easily obtain. They each agreed to remain in the room for a full orn. Ratchet would keep his sensors on them, though even he admitted that should one of the officers crack, he would not likely get in there in time.

Optimus secretly wondered if the Matrix of Leadership was malfunctioning, but chose to trust its wisdom that the bond between the two mechs was essential for the future of their kind.

When Prowl entered the room, he nearly turned back around and left again, but forced himself to consider that Jazz was not _simply_ trying to provoke him with the room's set up. The hardlight emitters were set to one of the famous, and now destroyed, Helix Gardens of Praxus.

"Figured t' just get it in the open, what's hangin' between us," came Jazz's smooth voice from the center of the crystalline garden where he was lounging on a comfortable chaise-style bench with a cube of high grade. Another cube was waiting on a second, similar bench, across the glowing crystal path from his.

Prowl walked stiffly to the bench and sat upright, staring daggers at the feline grace of his nemesis. Without a word he took his cube and downed the entire thing, his lighter blue optics meeting Jazz's indigo visor with a fierce intensity that would have shocked the Autobots accustomed to Prowl's dispassionate, calm, logical demeanor. He didn't say a word.

They each waited for the other to budge, but Jazz, finally, was the one who relented, shifting and looking around. "I used t' love this spot," he said quietly. "When I got off shift, I'd come here an' watch the sparklings play."

This comment brought a low, dangerous rumble from Prowl, who abruptly stood and began to pace. "Sparklings you were responsible for destroying," the tactician growled. "Sparklings who were dragged off to Shockwave for reprogramming after _you_ let down the city's defenses."

Jazz, unexpectedly, retracted his visor, his red Polyhexian optics whirling with emotion. "Say it, Prowl. Say it all," he invited softly, seductively.

With a feral growl Prowl lunged at the saboteur who remained unmoving, simply allowing the other to dig his fingers into his shoulder armor and shake him ruthlessly.

"You destroyed them," the tactician hissed.

"Say it Prowl," Jazz said with perfect calm. When Prowl only dug his hands in further and shook him again, he continued, unfazed. "I infiltrated the Praxus Defense Force. I infiltrated the very city ya set up as a safe haven for neutrals an' creators with sparklings n' younglings. Your precious battle computer calculated it was the most defensible position 'til they could be shipped off planet but ya didn't calculate for me. I gained the trust of the very mechs ya commanded 'fore ya came t' work for the Prime. I sabotaged the entire defense network an' allowed the Seekers t' fly right in, followed by Shockwave and the ground troops. Say it, Prowl!"

Energon was flowing down from the gaps in Jazz's shoulder plating as Prowl continued to squeeze and shake him, tearing at the joints, threatening to take off Jazz's arms with a screeching sound of bending metal.

"Why!" the normally calm mech finally shrieked, his optics nearly white in rage, tearing off a plate of armor from Jazz's left shoulder and flinging so hard against a branching, coral-like crystal that the hardlight shattered. "Why go after sparklings and younglings! Why take out an entire city!"

"Ya know why, Prowl! 'Cause I was programmed t' do it, mech. Frag, you know how infiltration works. Didn't even know I was a 'Con. Didn't know a thing 'til the sleeper codin' activated. An' I fought it. I fought it hard, but Soundwave was too slaggin' good an' I wan't good 'nough. Not yet. Ya know it, but ya can't process it!"

The words deflated Prowl, who rolled off Jazz to the iridescent path, his normally proud form hunkered in on itself.

Jazz handed Prowl another cube of high grade, and then began to patch up his leaking energon lines. While he worked, he quietly spoke.

"Ya already know the basics of how I 'came a 'Con. To lots of good mechs, Megatron seemed like an angel of Primus himself, promisin' energon, chance to make somethin' of ourselves, not t' be stuck in a caste or station we had no hope of escapin'."

"You were fools," Prowl said in an emotionless voice, sipping on his high grade, and moving to his bench to lie back, shuttering his optics so he could listen without looking at the lost gardens.

"No arguin' with that one, Prowler. But there's reason so many of us got amnesty when we got wise, those who were able t' get out, at least. Not that I expected it. Not with my position and history."

"I argued rather vehemently against amnesty for you," Prowl said dryly.

"I never expected t' come here and live, Prowl, much less get promoted t' command. I just hoped t' bring enough good intel with me t' partly atone for what I'd done."

Prowl sat up, his optics onlining on with a bright flash of white. "Nothing, _nothing_ you brought back can bring sparklings back from the pit you sent them to, and nothing can bring bring back mechs who were stuck in Shockwave's breeding vats, who watched their own creations reformatted into mindless killing machines. How could a mech who joined the Decepticons looking for justice ever have agreed to that?"

Jazz began rerouting the torn wires with the natural skill of someone who'd long done his own repairs to survive. "I took a mission I thought at the time was right," he shrugged, and then winced at the pain the motion caused. "Was just a low level Ops specialist, tryin' t' trade my skills for energon, but I believed in the cause. Praxus, Kalis and Iacon an' all the other pretty Alpha-ruled cities represented every slaggin' thing that was wrong with us. They had t' burn, start new. That is how we saw it. But we weren't gonna kill no Alpha sparklings or younglings. They had t' be taken from their creators 'cause otherwise they'd simply upgrade into the same Alphas that had been causin' us grief for so long. They were t' be taken to a safe spot, allowed t' develop their skills 'n protocols free of Alpha interference an' all that slag. We had a youth sector set up an' everything for 'em." Jazz laughed bitterly.

Prowl grimaced. He was well aware of the story of the Decepticon youth sector that was actually a reprogramming center, and how the mechs who were supposed to be mentors, largely goods and services builds who had converted to the cause, all ended up as mindless breeders for Shockwave's experiments.

"Soundwave did the programin' for the sleeper code, an' the next thing I know I'm Aoide, a Kalis enforcer, smugglin' out a group of Alphas to Praxus where they'd be safe from the uprisin'. Proudly joined the PDF. When the sleeper code kicked in, I fought it hard, Prowl. I couldn't stand seein' young sparks taken from their creators, no matter what I thought of the Alphas. But it was no good. Soundwave was too good. I got t' see what they did with the ones I'd supposedly liberated. Then I got angry."

"Angry enough to become SIC of Megatron's Special Ops?" Prowl gave a bitter laugh.

"Pretty much," Jazz admitted with easy grace, though Prowl, who was now watching him closely, could see pain in his optics he did not normally show. "Was fragged off that he could do that t' me, program me with sleeper code I couldn't overrule. Thought I was better than that. So I studied with him an' with all of the other Con BlackOps. Learned the finer points of the craft. Not like I coulda come here an' done it. None of you could teach me what I needed t' know. But I knew I'd come when I was ready, when I could break into their own processors without the bein' the wiser, get data that would really make a difference. When I was better than my teachers, I ripped all the data I could 'n disappeared without a trace. Left behind some nasty gifts as well."

"Your operations killed a lot of good mechs while you were waiting for the right time to leave," Prowl deplored. "Did you ever consider that."

Jazz suddenly stood, turning his back to the Praxian. "'Course I did. This is a slaggin' war. We all make choices that will send us to the pit. No way the matrix is gonna take us command types when its done. I coulda come over with nothin' but my crimes, an been executed for 'em, or I could come with a few more sparks on my hands, but with somethin' that could really make a difference for Prime to stop Megatron. I'm not in this war t' bring back no golden' age." He paused and stalked over to where his mangled armor plate was on the floor and picked it up, massaging it back into shape with his dark hands.

"It was never a golden age for me an bots like me," he continued. "I'm in it t' stop a maniac who is surrounded by maniacs who might even be worse than he is. I'm in it 'cause most of the 'Cons who were like me are either extinguished, neutrals, or Autobots now, an' the ones who are left only want to see everything they think is weak smelted in the pits to strengthen the strong."

"And you are the most skilled infiltrator the 'Cons have known, so even this could be part of some bigger plan," Prowl said calmly. "How do you know you aren't a sleeper now? How do you know you aren't just waiting for the right signal isn't just waiting to activate more code."

"'Cause I'd tear out my own spark 'for I let that happen again, Prowl. Prime has seen my spark. I demanded it,"

Jazz said, his frame trembling from remembered pain of what an interrogation merge with Prime's spark was like.

"Maybe you came up with a way to resist him," Prowl accused, standing in front of the other mech. "Maybe you got to his code before he ever initiated the merge."

Jazz howled with laughter. "Your battle computer come up with that, mech? 'Cause that is the most slaggin' ridiculous thing I've heard in a vorns. Ya don't resist Prime's spark. Damn, you really think I'm that good? I should be slaggin' honored."

"No," Prowl murmured.

"No what? I shouldn't feel honored ya think I'm good enough t' reprogram our Prime without anyone the wiser 'n hide my true nature from his spark?"

"No, my battle computer didn't come up with it," Prowl barely whispered. "It won't work when it comes to you. I can't analyze you with it. When I try, my logic center glitches," he admitted to what everyone in command knew.

"Always thought it was my looks that did it t' ya," Jazz said in a cheeky tone, surprised by how close he was standing the mech whom only loyalty to Prime kept from offlining his fellow officer, and even more surprised to find his chassis was heating from the proximity. He tentatively reached out with a brush of his field, only to have Prowl recoil and step back, but not before Jazz heard his fans kick in.

Jazz wisely said nothing about it. Instead he sat back on his chaise and grabbed a second cube. "Only one way ya can really find out if I'm talkin' slag or not, Prowler," he said in a nonchalant tone. "You're gonna have t' merge with me, find out for yourself, 'cause no matter how many times Prime tells ya that I can be trusted, 'til your own spark knows, aint gonna be worth tank sludge. Which mean ya gotta let me see your secrets, too."

"I have no secrets to lose recharge over," Prowl snapped, examining a particularly complex crystal structure growing near the benches, touching it with a tenderness that would have surprised any who believed him to be without emotion.

"Sorry t' tell ya, mech, but I can read ya like an unencrypted datapad. Ya blame yourself for Praxus, an' for every other defeat your precious computer couldn't predict 'cause some pit-spawned variables defy logic and statistical analysis. Well let me tell ya, 'aint your fault. If ya'd stayed in Praxus, stayed in command of the PDF, it still would 'a fallen. Ya just would be gunmetal gray or smelted for parts, 'stead of havin' to live with guilt that aint yours. Ya hate me 'cause ya hate yourself, 'cause I represent your failure." Jazz stood up again and started to pace. "Well wake up mech, wasn't your failure. Ya did what ya could and it wasn't enough, and now I get t' live with knowin' I let down the defenses that destroyed th' most beautiful place an' some of the best sparks I've ever known. If I can live with that, ya can learn to live with bein' out of control of some of the variables, includin' me."

Prowl whirled around to find Jazz standing right behind him, red optics swirling with a grief. Blue optics widened in shock as Jazz spiraled open all four of his ports and opened his chest. "Look at whatever ya want, Prowl. Kill me if ya don't like what ya see. I never expected to survive comin' to Iacon anyhow. Every time I look at ya, I remember what I did and what can't be undone."

Prowl keened as he felt his own systems respond with near violent lust to the inherent vulnerability in front of him, his spark lunging at a resonance that felt right on a level that was terror-inducing, bypassing processors, coding, and logic centers to something deeper and far more primal for the two mechs. The enforcer's powerful pursuit engine roared to life and he grabbed the mech in front of him, cables plunging into open ports, glossa hungrily claiming the pliant mouth as they both fell to the ground in a crash. Prowl's chest plates opened, and without any care or gentleness, he took what had been offered.


	8. The Song of Primus

**Title**: Arranged by the Stars  
><strong>Chapter Title<strong>: Chapter 8 _The Song of Primus_  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: G1 AU  
><strong>Author<strong>: femme4jack  
><strong>Pairing<strong>: past Jazz/Optimus Prime, present Mirage/Hound, Jazz/Prowl  
><strong>Rating<strong>: R  
><strong>Warnings<strong>: Public Interfacing (spark), mech/mech, arranged sparkbonds, lots of liberties with G1 canon history, references robot reproduction (not mechpreg)  
><strong>Summary<strong>: The orn for the celebration of the new sparkbonds has finally come. Mirage is now settled and serene, but will Jazz and Prowl run away from the altar?  
><strong>Notes<strong>: Written for the April 2011 challenge at the prowlxjazz community on livejournal.  
>klik = 1.2 minutes; breem = 8.3 minutes; joor = 6.92 hours; orn = Cybertronian day32 joor/9.22 earth days; vorn = Cybertronian year/83 earth-years  
>::Text:: Comm chatter<br>~text~ spark/bond communication  
>I relied heavily from Dathana de Gray ch. 78 Bonding Celebrations (tf-socket-fics. livejournal. com 56125 .html) for this chapter.

_A big thank you to every one reading, subscribing, and fav-ing. I've never had this kind of response to a story before. For those following, please consider leaving a review. It is such an encouragement as a writer to know why folks enjoy reading a story and are continuing with it. Yes, I'm begging. It helps keep the muses fed and the bunnies hopping._

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><p>Arranged by the Stars 8: The Song of Primus<p>

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><p><em>Iacon, approximately 6-million years ago<em>

Prior to the war, only two of the five mecha gathered on the dais of the Celestial Temple could ever have hoped to stand under the now cracked serendibite crystal dome with its veins of rhodium and iridium shaped in ancient glyphs telling the story of Primus and the creation of Cybertron. Instead, three commoners, a Prime who had once been a commoner himself, and an Alpha who had been kindled and coded in hopes of being the Prime Consort all stood in quiet reverence before the gathered Autobots who were present both as witnesses and security for the most formal ritual Iacon had hosted since before the advent of the war. All five were polished to a mirror-like finish, with filigree, glyphs, and various precious metal and gemstone charms added to all of their armor, though only Mirage carried the ornamentation as though it truly belonged on him.

Nevertheless, the spectacle was breathtaking, even lacking many of the elements a traditional high ranking Alpha bonding would have had before the towers fell. There were no troupes of Alpha sparklings to do the traditional dances entreating Primus to bless the kindling that would take place between the sparks that were to bond. Absent were the high end pleasurebots giving their colorful flair to the celebration as they made their way through the gathered witnesses, ports open to take off the edge for any who became overwhelmed. And, most strikingly, those gathered as witnesses were adorned with weapons rather than woven metal cloaks and imported gemstones and metals from distant organic worlds.

Even lacking the singers, dancers, and other artists to perform the nearly half-orn long history of the Alphas, the ceremony was solemn and spectacular. Mirage had performed an abbreviated version of the ancient dance himself that had left the gathered mecha, only a few of of whom had witnessed the dance before, with engines revving and vents open wide. To Mirage, it was but a pale imitation of what had once been, but even then, he had dedicated his whole spark to the ritualized, seductive movements accompanied by the throbbing harmonic voices of the remaining Alpha survivors. Though his resigned serenity at what was to come was the result of Jazz's careful, yet painful editing of his core code, he performed the dance with a pure spark, as though his intended were Prime himself and the witnesses gathered were the highest ranking Elders of the Council rather than civilian commoners thrust into a war to protect themselves from annihilation.

Now Mirage's optics met those of his intended bondmate, who by means of a command structure change, now led the newly formed Scout Division. While still answering to Jazz, the scouts had responsibilities far beyond Special Operations, and Hound was highly respected and easily recognized as the most talented of their number. He was an officer now. Mirage, as Jazz's SIC, was now technically ranked by his intended, which made his consort coding purr in something bordering on contentment. Though Hound wasn't a ranking Alpha, and certainly not of the ruling elite destined for the no longer existing High Council, the edits had done their work, and Mirage had gone from despondent to cautiously relieved, though he couldn't help but wince a little at the dreamy, worshipful look his "ranking" intended was giving him. Hound was infatuated with him, as so many were, simply because he was Alpha and therefore precious and rare. The nanites that formed his protoform and armor were superior in quality and traced their lineage to Prima. Even the science Alphas could not compare in form with him, a second creation designed to be a perfect physical specimen to grace the arm of the Prime. Before today, the commoners of the Autobots had looked, but had not been allowed to touch, or even speak with him unless it involved a mission. It was not snobbery. It was core coded Alpha consort programming. He could issue orders and instructions, speak to them when ordered to do so by his Lord, but beyond that, the protocols of a Lord-consort demanded silence. He was the beautiful, and deadly, ghost behind the throne.

Part of Mirage's original function as consort to a Lord of Cybertron was the careful preservation of Alpha culture and code. He was an outstanding programmer, and had he bonded with a mech destined for the Council he would have been responsible for programming any sparklings they kindled and editing that coding as the sparkling was upgraded. Even he knew it was a function that had to be revised for him to have any true part of the Cybertron to come...if there was a Cybertron to come. Though he, himself, would never be able to let go of it, protecting Alpha privilege, power, history and culture meant very little now. Yet, like so many Alphas, his own coding restricted him to an extent that few who were not part of his caste would even be able to comprehend. He could be highly fluid when it came to pleasing his superiors and the mech whom he would serve as consort and bondmate, but the flexibility ended when it came to matters of guarding the Alpha heritage. Those who had coded him him had never processed that one day the heritage would no longer exist to be protected, or that the sparklings he would create would need far different coding simply to survive the war. They could be Alpha in quality, but Mirage knew they could not be Alpha in processorset. They could not be like him.

Jazz's edits had been elegant and precise, attempting to keep much of the coding intact to avoid potential glitches and cascade failures, while adjusting the function so that protecting Alpha heritage was replaced with the protection of Cybertron's heritage and people as a whole. This was to be accomplished by bonding with an appropriate intended whom he could not only successfully kindle with, but partner with on Ops missions. A bond would make Mirage and Hound nearly unstoppable, giving the Alpha access to scout's sensor suite while he was under his disruptor cloak.

Mirage didn't know just how much Jazz had edited. His commander had kept him blissfully ignorant to much of it even if he couldn't block all of the pain that such deep editing entailed. He likely had revised memories as well to avoid gitches when memory files of the previous code conflicted with the present. Mirage would never know. He did not wish to. What he did know was it felt right, not just to his coding, but to his spark, to be following the will of his Prime and his commander. He already knew Hound as a valuable partner in their missions, but he could now admit that Hound would be a caring bondmate, far more concerned with Mirage's needs and feelings than the Alpha ever had been coded to expect from his intended. _He_ was the one who was supposed to be concerned about his Lord and mate's needs and feelings. It was his duty as consort to be everything from pleasurebot to confidant to body guard when necessary. Yet, he was surprised at just how pleasant it felt to know that he was bonding with a mech who viewed him as more than his function. He was determined to please Hound the way he would have pleased Prime, or another ruler, even if it meant making more sacrifices of his Alpha values to do so. Yet, it was clear Hound would never ask him to do sacrifice any of those values. It made Mirage determined all the more to learn what the thick-armored, green mech enjoyed and secretly wished for from him. While he did not wish to consider what changes Jazz had written to make it possible, he found that even the despised, organic-like tactile intimacy favored by the masses of Cybertron suddenly did not disgust him.

Until Prime had spread word of his intentions to arrange bonds for the purpose of kindling a new generation of their kind, Mirage had lost all hope that he would be standing on this dais. When word had spread among the officers, there was simply no way he could not volunteer for the program, even with the risk it ran of leading to glitches and failures in his coding. The highest aspirations of his coding had been a bond with the Prime. While certainly no one had imagined the next Prime would have been reformatted from a dock worker after Sentinal's assassination, Alpha Trion had clearly known what he was doing, and the Matrix did not lie. He had never even considered that the Matrix would not see fit to have him bond with the spark he had been built for. Yet now he stood, strangely content, not to bond to the Prime, but to a scout who had looked after him as a sparkling. While many of his sparkling memories were incomplete or had been compressed to make room for more important files, he did remember the large, steady, green protector whom he had been allowed to speak with at the time. He recalled climbing up the giant frame, the feeling of protection of his hands, of the simple joys of hiding from the scout and being found even with his disrupter shield up. He recalled the feeling of safety and warmth the resonance of the guardian-scout's spark had provided before he understood the difference between Alpha and commoner. He remembered, too, the mechling hunts in the vorns when coding no longer permitted him to casually converse with or touch the scout, remembered following the green mech through the canyons outside Iacon and silently admiring his frame and superior tracking abilities, so suited to his function.

Hound continued to look at Mirage with the rather goofy expression of a mech who was completely and utterly infatuated. The Alpha could not help but to reward the look with a ghost of a smile before a gentle movement of his armor signaled to the scout that they should both be looking at Prime, which they did. The pause in the ceremony had not been part of the original plans, but a few of the gathered mechs had been so enthralled by the Alpha dance that they had, literally, melted a few circuits, and Ratchet was attending to them. Mirage could not even bring himself to be disturbed by the uncouth disruption. Instead, he inwardly preened that dance had that affect on those gathered. It had never been intended to be seen by those outside of his caste, and it was no wonder it had overwhelmed the inferior systems.

The CMO gave the signal that the ceremony could continue, and all four mechs gathered in front of Prime knelt, Mirage with perfect grace as he pressing his helm to the floor. Their Prime was not one to ask for such visible expressions of fealty, though doing so to Primus' given form was as natural to the spy as refueling. However, on this occasion, even the least reverent of mechs could feel the power of their Prime, who was so much more than their High Commander. The Matrix chose his spark, which meant that even when he had simply be Orion, his spark was pure emanation of Primus's own, or at least that is what the Alphas had always taught. Never mind that some Primes had simply been puppets of the Council and had even been known to be killed when they stepped too far out of line. _This_ Prime had never been a puppet. He had been rebuilt outside of the Alpha ranks, in secret, by Alpha Trion himself, and had claimed the matrix despite Council objections. More than any Prime in their history, Mirage had faith that Optimus Prime truly was the emanation of Primus and not simply a tool, chosen when he had been sparked by Vector Sigma for his destiny. To Mirage's coding, and more importantly, his spark, there was no doubt that this Prime of humble origins deserved the fealty that was being shown him by every mech in the Celestial Temple that orn.

Everything up to that moment had been prelude. Now, the ceremony truly was beginning. Prime began to intone the ancient chant taught to him by the Matrix. His resonant voice stroked every audio sensor under the dome, as well as those watching through the remote feed, as though it were a physical caress, touching not only sensors, but activating dormant protocols of an ancient faith and bringing the sparks of those present into greater resonance with his own. One day, many vorns in the future, Mirage and Hound would be on a planet the native sentients simply referred to as Earth, listening politely to a choir from a place called Mongolia perform at a diplomatic event. They would turn toward each as the overtones and deep, guttural harmonics of the throat singers echoed through the hanger. It was the most similar sound either had ever heard, though the voice of a Primus-given form sang in registers lower and higher than any organic ear was capable of hearing. It had been so hauntingly familiar that Mirage would take his first true interest in human culture and travel with Hound to listen to other examples among the Tibetan monks on the India-Nepal border, the Tuva in Northern China, the Inuit of Canada, and contemporary versions in North America and Europe. The music seemed to have much the same effect on the humans as it did on his own kind, though in their case, core code subroutines all Cybertronians had were designed to respond to the harmonics of Prime's singing voice with trust and obedience, that was, until Megatron began "freeing" some mechs of it in his reprogramming campaigns. Prime was reluctant to use the power of his singing voice, so those who had heard it at the bonding and on a few other memorable occasions treasured the experience and the way their systems and sparks responded with a sense of well-being and trust the transcended any fear of pain, loss or deactivation. When Primus sang through their Prime and stroked the ancient coding, they were all, at least for a brief moment, one.

To the left of Mirage and Hound, Jazz was also kneeling next to the intended he had never imagined taking to his berth, much less bonding with. It was, quite literally, the first time he had ever knelt before Prime. Even when he had gleefully danced around every Autobot security measure in order to turn himself in to Optimus on the giant mech's own berth, he had not knelt. It would never have occurred to him to do so. Polyhexians were notoriously unimpressed with the the Council, the Alphas, and the theocracy that had governed Cybertron as long as records had been kept. Jazz had turned himself in not out of any fealty, but because Optimus seemed the only alternative to Megatron. The Autobots were losing, which was not acceptable to Jazz. Megatron was intent on burning away everything he perceived as weakness, including those Jazz had believed he had joined the Decepticons to protect. The saboteur, interrogator and assassin had played his part well for vorns, becoming the ruthless and much feared SIC of Megatron's Special Ops division, used as much against Megatron's own forces as those who opposed them. He was far more feared than his direct commander, Soundwave. Megatron had trusted him enough to use him into his own berth, and Jazz was good enough that the High Commander had never suspected that he was quietly being mined for valuable data.

Optimus had not called security when he entered his darkened quarters, exhausted, desperate for recharge after several orns of a grueling, unsuccessful campaign. He had turned on the light to find Soundwave's SIC smirking at him in a decidedly seductive pose on his own berth, holding out a data chip with the hand that wasn't resting behind his then red-visored helm.

"Ya might wanna have a look at this 'fore ya offline me, mech," the black and white had said with his signature Polyhexian lilt.

Prime, to his credit, had not flinched or shown any surprise. "Indeed?" he responded, taking the chip, wisely placing it into an external reader rather than his own slot. He raised an optic ridge as he started cataloging the files it contained. "What makes you think I'd offline you?"

"First of all, if ya wanna win this war, ya gotta stop makin' those kind of decisions, mech, not that I'm not grateful or anythin'," Jazz had begun. "Secondly, ya'd be a complete fool not t' offline me. I could do anything t' ya here"

"You'll find my processors far more difficult to crack than Megatron's," Prime had said in a knowing tone, obviously gleaning where some of the information had come from. "I have no plans to offline you if you are defecting, Jazz. I have my ways of checking the authenticity of such a move."

"Mech, yer glitched. I could be here t' assassinate yer pretty aft."

"But you aren't," Optimus had said with a relaxed smile, climbing onto the berth next to his enemy with creaks and groans of a frame well past the need for simple recharge. "You are here on your own. Megatron would never send someone to do the deed he insists on performing with his own hand."

"That mech's glitched, too. War coulda been over vorns ago if he'd used me proper. Look where I have ya now."

"Um, yes, look where you have me. What are you going to do?"

That was when Jazz first truly noticed the power of the spark resonance on the berth with him, the first time he understood just what it meant when mechs had warned him about Prime's spark. He knew that he had lost the game before he'd even begun to play.

But still, he had never knelt, even after the orn-long spark interrogation he had insisted on when Prime granted him amnesty, just to be certain he wasn't a sleeper agent again.

Now he felt the power that Prime so rarely used, the resonance stroking his core coding that could demand anything. He would gladly jump into a black hole to obey. It was a spark-expanding feeling, to know just how much power their Prime could have over all of them, yet chose not to use. Instead, he relied on the power of their own sparks and convictions to send them into battle. They were loyal, yes, but very few actually worshipped the Primus-given form, even knowing without a doubt who he was and what the Matrix had made him.

Jazz's spark demanded that he kneel and allow the chant to wash over him, to cleanse away any doubt or reservation, any last vestige of mistrust that Prime meant them well and would send them to harm only for the good of the many, and only with deep regret and the promise of being one in the Matrix. Even as his core code and spark cried out an unreserved "yes" to the voice of Primus, Jazz's upper processors added their own affirmation. He _trusted_ Prime, not just because his coding demanded it at the moment, but even more so because Prime had proved himself trustworthy when not using the power of his spark and voice.

His hand crept to brush against the hand of the mech kneeling next to him, whose sensor wings were visibly shivering as the song continued and the voices of those assembled joined in. The harmonics spread far beyond their audio sensor range, but they could still feel the music through the vibrations passing through their frames and making the floor beneath them shake. Prowl's hand opened, and grasped Jazz's tightly, a world of emotion from grief to fear to hope, expressed in a single touch. The two could, at the very least, claim a far greater understanding of each other after their orn of energon-sizzling facing that followed upon their first painful merge. Their sparks and frames knew far too well what it had been near impossible for their processors to acknowledge: the line between love and hate was a thin one. Once they allowed themselves to understand the other, enmity had dissolved, though true trust in one another would take time. Trust in Prime was enough for now. An initial sparkbond was "simply" the trading of a small part of their essences, allowing a sense of the other even when separated by short distances, but not the intense connection of sparks that came only with time and repeated, intentional deep merging and sharing. After several full merges, they would have enough of a bond to attempt to kindle, but nothing compared to what the myths and songs claimed a bond was capable of.

The chant swelled in intensity, reaching a final crescendo when Prime's own chest split, his laser core moving up and to the side; his chamber spiraled open allowing the fractal light of his spark to pour out over the gleaming, polished armor and reflect from the facets of the crystal dome above them. The nanite impregnated rhodium and iridium glyphs emblazoned on the dome began to glow with their own inner light in response, bathing the entire assembly in the light of Primus. Prime reached in and removed the Matrix from where it rested below his spark chamber, its crystal pulsing in tempo with the ancient chant, casting its own light along with that of prismatic spark that marked Optimus as a Prime. As they had been coached, the two intended pairs rose to their feet, heads bowed in deep supplication as the light of the Matrix and Prime's spark bathed their frames in a sacramental blessing. Prime then held up a hand in a signal for the chant to end, his chestplates closing protectively around his spark, while the Matrix remained in this hands, held high above his head for all to see.

"Kin of Primus," Optimus deliberately used the traditional title a high priest would only have used for the Alphas. "We stand together this orn as something far more than a wall to hold back chaos and destruction. Walls all eventually crumble to the forces of entropy, no mater how sturdy they are built. It will be in creating the new that we have a future, not preserving what has already passed. We stand together to create something new out of the remains of the old, to affirm rights of every Cybertronian, of every caste, frame, and function, sparked by Vector Sigma or kindled by bondmates, to be able to chose their own destiny rather than having it chosen for them, to make the most of their functioning, and, if they wish, to pass on their own sparks and coding to future generations. This travesty of a war is not about the future verses the past. It is about two different visions of the future. Our vision is of freedom, respect, and value for all sentient beings, whether of our own kind or those on other worlds, the other a future in which the physically strong and aggressive dominate all others and deny them their choice."

"Yes," he continued with a voice that could command civilizations to rise and fall, "we are about to embark on a desperate plan with horrible risk - kindling vulnerable new sparks in the midst of a war, knowing precisely what our enemies would do to them if they were captured. Yet, without a future generation, what reason is there for us to hold back the darkness when more of us are lost each vorn? For the sake of the future, let the sparklings these brothers have vowed to kindle belong to all of us, and us belong to them, that we may fight not only to protect our lives, but live to build a new future. It may seem ironic that, for the sake of a future generation, and the freedom and peace we hope they have as their sparkright, these four mechs have voluntarily allowed another to make such an important choice for them. In return, I offer them my most sincere hope and trust that their bonds will kindle not only new sparks, but the joy of spark-deep companionship and acceptance."

Prowl's hand had not left Jazz's when they stood. The tactician let the words wash over his receptive spark, and could not find it in himself to disagree. He had chosen, but had not logically processed the possible results of that choice. He no longer hated Jazz. But being reminded every orn of the greatest failure of his functioning and the loss of nearly every member of the city he had once protected was enough to make his tightly controlled emotions overwhelm his powerful logic circuits. It seemed the Matrix had decided to force the issue for two of them, for the greater good, and, if he were honest, for their own good as well. It was certainly not proper for two of the highest commanders under Prime to have such strong animosity toward one other.

The Autobot SIC had gone back into full-on tactical planning mode during the 3 decaorns following the violent and then passionate interfacing in the hardlight training room. He had accepted what was to come, and spent the orns making certain that the plans he had set in motion to keep public celebration safe were properly implemented. Though Iacon was still quite secure, he still had planned several distracting strikes against 'Con outposts. In addition, Ultra Magnus and Elita-1 were gathering their squadrons on the third lunar base that was closest to one of the Decepticon controlled space bridges that orbited the planet. He had no doubt that Megatron knew what was happening in Iacon, but the build-up of such dangerous Autobots was not something the Decepticon leader would be able to ignore, lest he lose his advantage. By the time Megatron would strike the lunar base, it would be abandoned and destroyed, hopefully damaging the space bridge with it. They had not planned to hold the base anyhow, and another, far more secret plan was in motion for a safe location to kindle and allow the sparklings time to develop enough to be upgraded into mech frames. The plans had been in motion long before Prowl knew whom Prime had in mind for him to bond with. He was confident in the variables, and could turn his processors fully to the ceremony at hand.

While double bonding ceremonies had been rare even when the Celestial Temple had regularly hosted such events, for Mirage's sake they followed Alpha protocol, with the highest ranking pair to bond first. Mirage and Hound moved to the side as witnesses, and the Alpha, amazingly, did not flinch when Hound took his hand, but instead could be observed rubbing his thumb against the other's hyper-sensitive hand plating. This left Prowl and Jazz facing each other alone in front of Prime, fields, optics, and one set of stiffly held sensor wings expressing no small amount of trepidation, despite the new understanding that had been built. Prime began to hum an ancient melody that soothed both of their racing systems, keeping their pedes firmly in place. It had the desired effect, and both reached out with only slightly shaking hands to grasp the Matrix, holding it between their own chests. There was a change in the tonality, and Optimus began, once again, to invoke the ancient language. In response, the crystal at the center of the matrix glowed brighter, its light appearing to reach out to both of their chests, teasing their plates open as laser cores moved aside revealing their spark chambers, which in turn, spiraled open by the will of the sparks within. As the two mechs moved closer together, the Matrix became the only thing between the amber glow of Prowl's spark and the silver glow of Jazz's, the coronas of both reaching toward the crystal center of the ancient artifact. As with the bonding ceremonies of the highest raking Alphas, the Matrix was visibly approving the match.

::Are you ready, my brothers,:: Prime commed them silently.

Both mechs had their optics locked on the light of their sparks intertwining with the glow of the Matrix. It was a mesmerizing and terrifying sight, having the most vulnerable part of their beings, their very life force, on display for all to see, especially one another. Despite the security that was surrounding them, it was Prime himself that made them feel safe. They both looked up at Optimus and gave a nod.

"The Matrix has approved the kindling bond of these two sparks," Prime sang, and reached between them to remove the artifact, leaving only their sparks, reaching now for one another.

Both mechs froze, neither able to take the lead. For a few nanokliks is appeared that they would back away from one another. But Prime's voice was vibrating them to their cores, and the rest of those present had joined again in the chant with renewed intensity. Prowl's sensor wings flexed, then stood upright and proud, and his field flared with determination and intention. He placed his hands on his former enemy's shoulders and pulled him into a chaste kiss, his vents open wide, gasping like an organic at the first shiver of contact between the two powerful sparks. Before, in the training room, they had joined just enough to read Jazz's intentions to know the truth of his words. It had been purely a surface level merge, as painful and pleasurable as even that had been, followed by nearly an orn of intense interfacing. This time, they would fully merge their sparks, becoming, for a moment in time, one being, as their sparks had once been with Primus' own. A part of their own sparks would be left with the other, forming the foundation of a bond on the level where physics and metaphysics became one reality.

He could feel the sheer terror in Jazz's own spark, so at odds with the persona he presented the world. Jazz was horrified at being known by any being as well as Prowl was about to know him. The only other person who had that level of knowledge of the saboteur was Prime himself, and even an interrogation merge had nothing on what was about to take place. It caused a spark deep well of compassion and mercy within Prowl to surface, something far deeper and truer to his nature than even his enforcer coding or the relentless logic of his battle computer. The silver spark was damaged, as was his own, by the choices they had made and which had been made for them. Prowl suddenly knew beyond logic that the Matrix was right. They not only could kindle together, they could heal one another, and in doing so would make themselves and the Autobots that much stronger. Strong enough to possibly create peace for their kind, and not merely for one another.

Prowl felt Jazz's shock at the strength of his sudden conviction, the saboteur momentarily pulling back from the kiss and the surface level merge, only to keen in pain at the separation and pull even closer, allowing his silver spark to sink into the certainty of the amber one that was welcoming him, tendrils of light delving in, seeking out the dim places to infuse them with warm light, each caress and penetration a flash of pure ecstasy for them both.

~Ya might hate what ya find here, Prowler,~ was Jazz's last coherent, terrified thought as his spark took over and began wending its way into Prowl's in response to the swiftly growing connection.

~Not possible,~ was expressed through will and feeling rather than words as the amber and silver ceased to simply probe and intertwine, suddenly merging into one bright star that momentarily shorted out the optics of all present.

Then they both did, indeed, _know_. Hatred was no longer possible in light of knowing on the deepest level who the other was. The one, outwardly a force of relentless logic, but at spark a cooling pool of compassion, mercy, staggering loyalty, but also self-loathing, shame, and paralyzing guilt for every spark that had been lost because of his imperfection and inability to predict for every variable. The other, outwardly, a force of relentless good cheer, but at spark a maelstrom of curiosity, a parched and never-sated thirst for knowledge, a ruthless will to do whatever was necessary to survive and protect what was precious to him, defiant independence that screamed he needed no one, but also knew he was wrong, all mixed with an agonizing fear of being used again against his will and the deaths that could result.

The oneness of the sparks momentarily, blissfully brightened all that was well and whole, the rapturous light and strength of two beings who were now one overwhelming the dim, cracked, and painful places within. With another, even brighter flash, the combined spark overloaded, spark energy pouring through both frames and lighting up the room like a star gone nova. Moments later, the light dimmed to normal as the two sparks separated back to the simple intertwining of coronas of a non-bonding merge, tendrils of light licking the other other in sensuous caresses. Somehow, the two officers had ended on the floor, Prowl supported by Prime's large frame as the tactician supported Jazz against his chest, both mechs slipping offline as their chestplates closed.

The few present who had ever seen a bonding merge stood frozen and stunned, never having witnessed anything as intense as what had just taken place, but Prime simply continued to chant, wrapping his broad arms around both of his commanders with a knowing look in his optics. It had been exactly what he, and the Matrix, had expected.


	9. Worship

**Title**: Arranged by the Stars  
><strong>Chapter Title<strong>: Chapter 9 Worship  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: G1 AU  
><strong>Author<strong>: femme4jack  
><strong>Chapter Pairing<strong>: Hound/Mirage  
><strong>Chapter Rating<strong>: R  
><strong>Chapter Warnings<strong>: mech/mech (spark, pnp, tactile, fields) - arranged sparkbonds, lots of liberties with G1 canon history  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Will the scout and noble overcome towerling distaste for tactile intimacy?  
><strong>Notes<strong>: Written for the April 2011 challenge at the prowlxjazz community on livejournal.

This is just a short, PWP chapter to get me back into this series again. My muses are making me giggle. This chapter was supposed to be Wheeljack/Ratchet/Ironhide (because of the poll results), but Hound, normally not pushy at all, had other plans and made them known as soon as I started writing. Jack and company will get their chapter next (*growls at Jazz and Prowl to behave and let some others get some time*). Thank you to Gatekat for the amazing insights on Towerling second creations through our coauthored stories, which I've borrowed from liberally for my own Mirage.

klik = 1.2 minutes; breem = 8.3 minutes; joor = 6.92 hours; orn = Cybertronian day/32 joor/9.22 earth days; vorn = Cybertronian year/83 earth-years  
>::Text:: Comm chatter<br>~text~ spark/bond communication

_Thank you so much to everyone who has stuck with this and who have reviewed!_

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><p>Arranged by the Stars 9: Worship<p>

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><p><em>Autobot Base, Iacon, Approx 6-million Years Ago<em>

Hound cycled his optics for a second time at the sight that met him in the quarters he now would be sharing with his bonded. _His bonded!_ his spark sang again, delighting in adding the appropriate qualifiers to the glyphs that made up Mirage's full designation, a designation that now included a version of his own. The first merge, in front of their Prime and all of their cohort had been exquisite bliss beyond anything Hound had encountered in sparksex before, and he had merged with many a mech over the vorns. Even the closest of friends held back in merging, keeping to surface level sharing: beautiful, pleasurable, but still surface. Mirage had given all that he was to his bonded as his coding demanded, and unlike every other time Hound had touched a spark, their cores had become one, without hesitation or boundary, sliding into one another as though they had come home at last. He could _feel_ the slight change in his own resonance, echoing Mirage's own, could sense the patient amusement from the lovely Alpha he was gaping at.

For gaping Hound was. Mirage, polished to a mirror-like finish, was lying on the berth in what could only be described as a completely seductive pose. His chestplates were unlocked but not parted, allowing a bit of the blue-white light within to leak out and cast flickering shadows on the walls. His ports were all spiraled wide open, and his primary and secondary interface cables were uncoiled and resting sensuously on his frame. He had a cube of rare Vos high grade in his hand, another on the platform next to the berth waiting for Hound.

"Are you just going to stand there with a goofy grin all orn, or are you going to come and join me?" the Alpha finally asked in a haughty tone that made Hound shiver.

"Mirage," Hound rumbled, his engine revving loud, but not moving from the doorway to the berthroom.

"Yes, Hound," the Alpha said indulgently, his optics brightening in amusement.

"I'm...I'm not going to be able to hold back...I'm not going to be able to keep my hands and glossa off of you. I can't keep this to just cables and sparks," Hound admitted, sounding half awed and miserable all at once.

"Then don't," Mirage said simply with a soft smile, setting down his cube next to Hound's. "You are my bonded. So long as it does not contradict with the will of Prime or my commander, my greatest desire is to please you."

Hound let out a static-laced keen of acute discomfort as he quickly crossed the distance between the doorway and the berth and knelt beside it, his hand reaching out to touch, but then pulling back.

"And what about your desires? Mirage, Alphas despise the kinds of interfacing I've been doing since my mechling upgrade. I don't want you to have to change yourself so much for me. You've lost enough as it is. You...you had to be reprogrammed even to be able to speak with me outside of our duties. I can't ask more of you than that."

The nemes-helmed Alpha gazed intently on the green scout for nearly a full klik, the silence pregnant between them as they both felt the fluctuations in their spark resonance fields reaching out to caress the stranger-lover before them. Mirage finally reached out and took the broad gray hand in his own long, elegant fingers, firmly pulling it toward his chest, and placing it, palm down, directly on his unlocked chestplates over his spark. His optics never left Hound's own as he spoke softly and deliberately, the full weight of his Alpha accent allowing no misconceptions of the truth of his words. "I am _nothing_, Hound, if I am not functioning to serve my bonded, my lord, and my Prime. It does not matter what had to be done to allow my coding to cooperate with reality. You need to understand that pleasing you is exactly what pleases me most. The only thing you could do that would cause me conflict and pain is to ask something of me that displeases the other two I serve."

Hound opened his mouth to speak, but instead found himself encircled by Mirage's perfect arms, pulled toward the destiny of their very first kiss, their sparks lunging for one another at their first purely physical intimate touch. How Mirage could kiss so perfectly, having never before done so nor having any coding to teach him how was a mystery for Hound to ponder another time. For now, the only thing that mattered was intertwining his glossa with Mirage's own in a lovely dance that echoed what their sparks would shortly be doing again, for the second time in an orn.

The scout's hands began to freely roam the perfect, polished plating underneath him, eliciting soft musical sighs of pleasure as he stroked his bonded's sensors and teased open his unlocked chest a little further with gentle magnetic bursts. Mirage's cables joined in the dance, snaking along Hound's sides to find the waiting ports, while Hound's seated themselves as eagerly as a petro rabbit in an unsecured energon stockpile. He was met with Mirage's formidable firewalls lowering as gracefully as the mech himself, inviting Hound see, to know that there was no conflict, no reticence about sharing the common, baser forms physical intimacy together. The certainty was almost enough to make the scout give his signature howl of delight, but his mouth was now too busy mapping its way down Mirage's neck, biting gently on the sensitive conduits, lines and cabling and rumbling his own desire each time the Alpha's engine revved in response.

"Hound!" Mirage's voice had taken on a desperate tone.

~Open you chest, but not your chamber yet,~ Hound instructed through hardline, feeling how deeply right it was to the Alpha to have his bonded command him.

Blue and white chest plates fully separated, and the multifaceted crystal chamber within moved up and forward, but did not spiral open. The tendrils of Mirage's corona were pressed agains the crystal facets, his field pushing hard into his bonded's in desperate desire for completion. Only the iron-will of his coding to please and obey kept the chamber closed.

Hound lowered his mouth and kissed the chamber reverently, letting his glossa slide along the finely crafted facets while reaching in his hand to cup the egg-shaped sphere. It was all that it took. Mirage instantly overloaded with a piercing keen, the flood of sensation through their hardline pulling Hound right over the abyss with him. This time, Hound did howl.

Only later, after they had repeatedly merged, would it occur to Hound that every tactile sensation associated with Mirage's spark chamber had to have been the result of brand new subroutines and even newly installed sensors. Mirage had anticipated what Hound would desire, and had already made the changes to allow his frame to respond the way he knew Hound would wish him to. Physically pleasuring the housing of Mirage's very spark was the basest, most offensive sort of intimacy an Alpha mech could ever have contemplated. For Hound, it was pure worship.


	10. Kindling Conflict

**Title**: Arranged by the Stars  
><strong>Chapter 10<strong>: Kindling Conflict  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: G1 AU  
><strong>Author<strong>: femme4jack  
><strong>Chapter Pairing<strong>: Jazz/Prowl, Mirage/Hound, Wheeljack/Ratchet/Ironhide  
><strong>Chapter Rating<strong>: PG-13  
><strong>Chapter Warnings<strong>:arranged sparkbonds, lots of conversation about robot procreation (non mechpreg), AU G1 canon history  
><strong>Summary<strong>: Tempers and excitement are running high as the two bonded pairs prepare for their first kindling.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: Written for the April 2011 challenge at the prowlxjazz community on livejournal. Yes, I know it is now July :)  
>klik = 1.2 minutes; breem = 8.3 minutes; joor = 6.92 hours; orn = Cybertronian day32 joor/9.22 earth days; metacycle = Cybertronian month (230 orns)/5.81 earth years, vorn = Cybertronian year/83 earth-years

* * *

><p>Arranged by the Stars 10: Kindling Conflict<p>

* * *

><p><em>Medbay, Autobot Base, Iacon, Approx 6-million Years Ago<em>

"Now if ya come this way, I'll show ya the incubation vats," Wheeljack said, his indicator flanges glowing blue and green to indicate his cheerful excitement as he and Ratchet led a group consisting of Optimus Prime, Mirage, Hound, Jazz and Prowl through the newest portion of their base's Medbay. They had just viewed the private chamber where the bonded mechs, connected to a multitude of sensors and personally monitored by himself and Ratchet would engage in the dangerous process of kindling a newspark. The chamber was connected to a second, larger bay with vats that would be filled with a nutrient rich mineral gel, various alloys, donated protoform material and nanites, both coded and blanks. Newsparks would be carefully placed in the vats where they would form their spark chamber around themselves over a period of ten to twenty orns, depending on the spark's size and strength. Once the spark chamber formed, it could then be placed in a pre-constructed sparkling shell (similar to the creation process that had utilized Vector Sigma), or be transferred to a second, larger vat where it would form its own protoform over a period that could last up to a metacycle depending on the complexity and size of the final structure (as well as the relative maturity it would be when it emerged).

It was a vastly different, alien process from that which most mecha among the Autobots had been created, and one which engendered an air of mystery even greater than the mystery that was Vector Sigma. Vector Sigma created both the new sparks and the casings in which they were held on specifications requested by the engineers who built the protoforms into which they were placed, and the mecha who onlined thus were fully mature beings, ready to fulfill their function after a period of mentorship and adjustment. The Alpha practice of sparks forming their own casings and basic protoforms was almost disturbingly organic in nature, which was odd, considering the contempt which many Alphas had once held for organic lifeforms.

"How much influence will we have on the coding and form if we place them in the secondary incubation vats?" Prime asked, placing a large hand on one of the eight larger vats that lined the wall behind the row of smaller vats used for forming the spark chambers.

"All depends," Ratchet explained, placing himself next to Prime. "The final form will be influenced by innate spark traits, but also by the coding and instructions we give the nanites. The coding and spark traits of the mecha who donate material will also be an important factor. Alpha practice was for all the creators to donate protoform material and coding, and for their house lord to select several others with desired traits or status to add to the materials. The priest-medics would carefully monitor as the frame and processors formed, and would add coding and nanites throughout the incubation period in order to shape the process and alleviate any coding issues that came up. In general, the core coding will be a mixture of that of all of those who donate material, and there is no limit to how many donors one uses."

"So one of the decisions ya will be needing to make is who'll donate nanites and protoform material to your sparklings, 'cause it will have a major impact on who your little glitch mouse becomes," Wheeljack added, looking at the two bonded pairs. Hound's grin hadn't faded throughout the entire tour, while Mirage's expression was one of patient indulgence for his bonded, whom he was standing next to rather than slightly behind as would have been Alpha custom. Wheeljack's mask hid his smile, knowing Mirage must have deleted that protocol for Hound's sake. Jazz and Prowl, on the other hand, looked like they would rather be anywhere but where they were at the moment. Both of the newly bonded pairs had been given a full decaorn of light duty (barring emergency) to strengthen their bond and allow it to settle. While the noble and scout appeared to be quite content in their new relationship, Jazz was clearly keeping a distance between himself and Prowl, and Prowl's sensor wings were unusually stiff. Wheeljack's flanges briefly flashed purple in concern.

"Mirage already has a list of those we plan to request donations from for the first go around," Hound said with pride, clearly ready to head to the kindling chamber and start immediately. "Do we need to be concerned about incompatibility issues between donors?"

"Not at all," Wheeljack explained. "The newspark itself will select the coding that best suits it from what is present in donated cultures, and we will be assisting and shaping the process. You can expect some coding glitches to arise, but that is why Ratchet and I will be monitoring the entire process. We can override just about anything the newspark is attempting if it looks like it would cause a major glitch," he said confidently. "But I can tell ya from experience, the less ya intervene with the process, the better the results in terms of spark who feels at home in its own frame and coding."

"Yes, but we are at war. Can we afford the luxury of allowing newsparks to form a personality matrix and form unsuited to that reality?" Prowl asked, speaking up for the first time, drawing every optic and sensor in the room to himself.

No one missed how Jazz stiffened at the comment, his field coiling close to himself. Suddenly Wheeljack had a very good idea what the source of tension was between the two newly bonded mechs.

"Very few of us were coded and intended for war, Prowl," Optimus said carefully, "and we have advantages, and disadvantages, that warbuilds do not have. We need to consider that this new generation's only experience will be that of functioning during a war, and ponder what life we can offer them when that war comes to an end."

"We should build 'em t' do whatever they have t' do t' survive, Prime," Jazz insisted. "This isn't about makin' new soldiers an' creatin' a strategic advantage," he insisted, shooting a glare at Prowl. "I won't be party t' makin' a generation t' be cannon fodder. Make 'em small, efficient, and send 'em in t' hiding, coded t' do whatever it takes t' stay away from the conflict an' survive."

"Like the neutrals have survived?" Prowl asked dispassionately. "You won't save them by sending them away from the war, Jazz. Their best chance for survival is with us, and we need to create a generation who can withstand the rigors of war more successfully than we ourselves have. That is how they will survive. That is what will give us a future, _and_ a strategic advantage."

"Frag you, Prowl! Sparklings aint a strategic advantage for ya t' stick in yer equations!" Jazz yelled, taking a menacing step toward his bonded.

"Enough!" a normally soft voice spoke sternly, and Mirage stepped in between his commanding officers with all of his core elegance, holding up both of his hands in a gesture for peace. "Forgive me, but the Matrix itself chose for us to bond with our partners, to create life together. We must trust it, trust Primus, and trust that process. I agree with Wheeljack. Our manipulation of the next generation should be minimal. If I begin manipulating it, I will code them to be Alphas, and their concern will be for their own power and influence. Jazz, you will inevitably create those who are good at being deadly from the shadows, survivors like yourself. Prowl, you will consider strategic advantage of tantamount concern. My bonded has said, and I agree, that we should give them the best of all of us, and allow their sparks figure out whom they wish to become. They will have gifts of the spark that none of us can anticipate, and that is what will allow them to survive and flourish. That is the blessing of this process of procreation."

The entire room looked at Mirage as though he had spontaneously budded a second head. He had just said more words in a row than any had ever heard the silent Alpha speak at one time.

"What?" he finally said when no one spoke. "My bonded has expressed a desire that I be more forthcoming with my opinions. I am simply following his wishes."

* * *

><p>Optimus Prime sat at his desk, his senior commanders and two of his closest friends sitting across from him, their fields and body-language making no secret of the stress that existed between them. He offered a silent prayer to Primus for patience, and perhaps for one of the new sparks to show an aptitude for relationship counseling, because it appeared these two would need it for many vorns to come.<p>

"And aside from the conflict regarding the coding for the newsparks, how are things?" he asked, hoping he didn't sound as awkward as he felt and silently cursing the ancient Primes and their meddling ways. He was beginning to be suspicious that the Matrix had paired these two not out of kindling compatibility, but for sheer entertainment value. Was it possible that the ancient artifact got bored?

Both of his officers looked down toward their pedes, but Optimus didn't miss the sly smile the crept onto Jazz's faceplates, nor the way Prowl's sensor wings flexed just so.

"Let's just say that considerin' how Prowler an' I disagree on just 'bout everything, it's a good thing that the facin' is hotter than a white dwarf star with a..."

"We are fine," Prowl cut Jazz off.

Optimus raised an optic ridge. "Fine," he repeated, dubiously.

"Well, didya expect we'd just stop arguin' in a single orn?" Jazz asked facetiously.

"I suppose I did not," Prime conceded. "But I admit that I am concerned for both of you. If it would help to merge with me..."

Prowl put up his hand. "If it comes to that, we will. But the Matrix did not make a poor choice. We are simply finding that we have more disagreements regarding kindling procedures than even I could have predicted. I recognize that my ability to look at the potential outcomes from a logical standpoint..."

"From a sparkless standpoint, ya mean. It's our sparklings yer talkin' 'bout..." Jazz interrupted.

"From a logical standpoint," Prowl continued as though Jazz had not interrupted, "may seem unfeeling. But I have their best interests and our own at the forefront of my processors. We cannot afford to make these decisions based on sentiment."

Prime cycled air through his intakes and sought out the wisdom of the previous Primes, only to find that the Matrix was silent when it came to the legitimate points his officers both had been making over the previous decaorn as they and the other bonded pair prepared for their first kindling merge. He would have to trust his own coding and spark on this. He had a suspicion he knew at least part of the problem that existed between the two, but needed to confirm it.

"You have both asked me to arbitrate this dispute. Before I give you my decision, I must ask, you say you are interfacing regularly. Does that include merging regularly?"

The immediate upward stiffening of Prowl's sensor wings and Jazz looking anywhere but at Prime was answer enough.

"We...both are finding merging to be highly disconcerting," Prowl finally answered for them both. "We have merged enough to solidify the bond, and have agreed to merge once a decaorn to keep the bond strong enough to kindle."

"You aren't enjoying your merges?" Optimus asked, trying to keep the shock out of his voice.

"Never said that," Jazz huffed. "We...Primus, it's just overwhelmin', losin' ourselves that way, an' feelin' Prowl in my spark more 'n more each time! Feelin' my spark _change_."

"I believe you will find your conflicts easier to resolve if you merge more frequently," Optimus suggested.

"We'll take that under consideration," Prowl said, effectively ending that line of conversation. "In the meantime, we need your decision regarding the sparkling coding if we are to proceed in three orns as planned."

Optimus was tempted to advise them to wait, to allow themselves more time to settle into the bond. But the command staff had agreed that they needed to have successful newsparks in the vats before Prime approached the next group of mechs the Matrix had selected to bond. Megatron was distracted by an all out rebellion by a group of neutrals and organics who had teamed up on a resource-rich colony world. It was far too distant from Autobot controlled territory for them to be able to intervene, but they could, at least, use the distraction to their advantage. It was the right time for them to kindle and get the sparklings upgraded and safe as quickly as possible.

Optimus regarded them steadily He had already had a private opinion regarding the best course, but would not have intervened in the plans of his officers unless they asked him to. "We are going to take protoform donations from everyone who is willing," he finally said. "These sparklings will belong to all of us. We will trust Primus and the new sparks to be exactly what they need to be for the sake of their own future, and intervene as little as possible."

If anything, Prowl and Jazz looked relieved to both be on the losing side of the argument.

* * *

><p>Ratchet and Ironhide were sprawled out on their recently upgraded berth, sharing a single cube of the rationed high grade when Wheeljack pinged them from the door. "Come on in," Ironhide hollered, sending the signal to unlock the door. Wheeljack walked in and plopped himself next to Ratchet, unsubspacing three rust sticks and handing one to each.<p>

"Been experimenting with some new recipes for the sparklings. Thought ya might wanna test the first batch," he said, retracting his mask to take a bite of his own.

"Ya promise Ah'm not gonna explode?" Ironhide asked teasingly, handing the single cube to Wheeljack.

"Make no promises, tell no lies," Wheeljack said noncommittally as he took a sip, his flanges flashing merrily.

"Aw, jest finish it off, Jack," Ironhide commented when Wheeljack made to hand the cube back. "We already had most of it before ya showed up."

"Wouldn't want to get overcharged tonight anyhow, considering what Wheeljack and I are going to be supervising tomorrow," Ratchet said pensively, sounding like getting overcharged was precisely what he needed.

"Shoot, Ah woulda never have believed the day would come when Jazz and 'ole Prowler would be facin' one another, much less bonded and makin' a scraplet of their own," Ironhide commented, taking a bite of his rust stick and raising an optic ridge in pleasure at the way it sparked and crackled under his dentes.

"Ya think those two are okay?" Wheeljack asked, turning to look directly at Ratchet. "They looked about ready to rip one another a new exhaust port the other day."

"Yes," Ratchet said, venting and rubbing his chevron. "I would worry if they weren't arguing. I never expected they would be anything other than explosive. Prime's decision and obtaining all of the donations has calmed them down."

"Heh, my quarters are next to theirs. Lets just say I'm glad I'm either in my lab or recharging here most of the time," Wheeljack said. "Explosive doesn't even begin to cover it"

"They fight that much?" Ironhide asked, looking concerned.

"Oh, I wasn't referring to their fights. Those are usually quiet." Wheeljack's flanges flashed with amusement.

With that explanation, the three shared companionable silence for a moment as they finished munching on their rust sticks, watching the holovid that was quietly playing.

"These are sure good, Jack, but Ah sure wish ya'd cooked up some more high grade instead," Ironhide commented as he finished his.

Wheeljack's flanges flashed a suggestive yellow-green, and he unsubspaced an electro-stim rod, turning it on with a hiss and crackle. "Rust sticks aren't the only things I worked on today," he said deviously. "And there's more than one way to get overcharged. We need to relax Hatchet here so he gets a good recharge before tomorrow, don't ya think?"

"Primus, Ah love it when the Matrix plays matchmaker," Ironhide said, revving his engine, as both he and Wheeljack went to work on the medic's frame before the white and red mech could do anything more than mewl in agreement.


	11. Being One

**Title**: Arranged by the Stars  
><strong>Chapter 11<strong>: Being One  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: G1 AU  
><strong>Author<strong>: femme4jack  
><strong>Chapter Pairing<strong>: Jazz/Prowl  
><strong>Chapter Rating<strong>: NC-17  
><strong>Chapter Warnings<strong>:smut (mech/mech spark), angst, can be read as dubcon (Jazz doesn't have a lot of choice over how his frame and spark respond to Prowl), arranged sparkbonds, lots of conversation about robot procreation (non mechpreg), AU G1 canon history  
><strong>Summary<strong>: In which Prowl's attention is rather intense and Jazz angsts.  
><strong>Notes<strong>: Written for the April 2011 challenge at the prowlxjazz community on livejournal. Yes, I know it is now July :)  
>klik = 1.2 minutes; breem = 8.3 minutes; joor = 6.92 hours; orn = Cybertronian day32 joor/9.22 earth days; metacycle = Cybertronian month (230 orns)/5.81 earth years, vorn = Cybertronian year/83 earth-years

Many Notes this chapter - hopefully they aren't longer than the chapter itself

Ack, I know I promised the next chapter would be the first of the sparkling ones, but this is an extra written for Flybystardancer, because she won my Help the South Auction listing. She requested a PxJ smut scene set in the past in Arranged by the Stars. I tried, I really did, but Jazz decided to be dramabot this week. I hope it pleases, Flyby, despite the angst. *hugs*

Also, gotta remember to give kudos to sources of inspiration! Eeeeee! I try to remember, but I get inspired so dang much by others that sometimes I slip up. Much credit, love, admiration, and fangirl squee to for her fic Borealis (transit-the-sun. livejournal . com / 6188 . html) which inspires me so much I should just make it my religion. Her incubation chambers were the inspiration for the procreation method used in this story, and in this chapter, she inspired the idea that at one point the Cybertronians were part of a hive organism and they still retain remnants of that. Too cool! If you've never read her story, read it! It is a constant source of joy.

I also need to say how much Hearts of Eternity's "Where You and I Collide" (on this site) inspires my head canon on Jazz. I'm not sure if she originated the "Jazz as a former 'con" trope, but she writes it brilliantly and deserves to be praised with great praise. My Jazz's Con history is different from hers, but she and Gatekat, who also developed the trope in such a cool way in our coauthored Dathana de Gray have definitely inspired my Jazz muse.

Finally, going on vacation with limited internet for two weeks, and I rushed to get this posted. Sorry if there are errors! Not likely to see must posting from me for the next couple of weeks, though you never know.

* * *

><p>Arranged by the Stars 11: Being One<p>

* * *

><p><em>Jazz and Prowl's Quarters, Autobot Base, Iacon, Approx 6-million Years Ago<em>

The door slid shut and Jazz leaned against it, crossing his arms as he watched his newly bonded mate work at the desk Prowl had insisted upon being in their quarters. (As if Prowl didn't work hard enough when he was on duty, he had to work when off as well). The black and white Praxian enforcer was leaning diligently over a data pad, scribbling glyphs and diagrams on whatever report he was responding to. Jazz knew that Prowl was aware of his presence, and did not take offense at the lack of greeting. If there was one thing he had learned about his bondmate in the two short decaorns they'd been together, it was that Prowl did not mean to seem aloof or sparkless. When he gave his attention to a matter, he gave it the full power of his processors, whether it was the latest report from Jazz's agents who were monitoring the Decepticons in the Halcion quadrant, or Bluestreak as he rambled on and on.

No, Prowl would soon turn the datapad off, store it away, and turn to face Jazz with that same relentless attention. The very thought made the saboteur's systems stutter and his external vents cycle in preparation for the coming heat. There was nothing quite like being the center of Prowl's attention. Ever since their bonding, the quality of that attention, the feeling of it encompassing his very spark had overwhelmed the TIC.

Merging as bondmates was something wholly different than the surface spark contact Jazz had shared with lovers. When they merged, Prowl knew _everything_, saw _everything_, and worse yet, _accepted_ it. He saw every mission Jazz had been a part of as a Decepticon. He saw the interrogations Jazz had conducted, for both factions, saw the activities since he'd become an Autobot that Optimus had been carefully shielded from. Not that they consciously thought of these things while they merged, but Prowl _knew_ them because he had taken all of Jazz into himself, as Jazz took all of Prowl. And it was too much. Being forgiven by one whom he had so wronged was too much. Being accepted, monster that he could be ... it was like being smelted in the pits and rebuilt, each and every time.

And as for knowing Prowl? Every merge made Jazz love the mech more intensely, more addictively, eroding his carefully crafted self-sufficiency into a weak pool of pure need. No one could ever say Prowl was sparkless. Prowl was a vast well of emotions, so different from Jazz's own. Yes, he was logical, methodical, but it was all underlaid with spark deep compassion that stunned Jazz and left him humble in its wake. How someone so fair and compassionate could function with the pain of sending other mechs off to die...

Jazz had survived and remained sane by carefully protecting his spark from caring too much over the vorns. Oh, he might seem to be the friendliest, most caring bot on base, but it all had an ulterior motive of survival: his own, Prime's, their factions, the planet itself which would not survive Megatron's thirst for endless power. Being the morale officer and lightening the load on other's sparks was not a function of how much Jazz cared for individuals. It was what needed doing to ensure their success. He cared for the Autobots so they could continue to go to the front lines, infiltrate and sabotage bases, repair broken frames to send them to be broken again, and the myriad other spark-damaging tasks it took to defeat their enemies.

But Prowl cared for each mech who became a part of his equations as a sentient individual, who deserved to be known, to be honored for their unique spark. He cared for them and still sent them to war. They were not tools. He felt each loss in a manner Jazz never had.

Prowl, compassionate, Prowl, was rarely provoked, but Jazz had always been rather adept at provoking him, like few others could, but now, it seemed, he provoked his fellow officer in a whole new way. The passion of Prowl's emotional response to him as they merged was enough to induce an overload at the first brush of their coronas. It eroded every micron of Jazz's control with the sheer intensity of love, desire, and above all, compassionate acceptance.

Jazz both loved and hated what Prowl could do to him. And Optimus wanted them to merge more often? When each merge was death and rekindling. Jazz was accustomed to being firmly in control when interfacing. Whether to gather intelligence, improve morale, or simply teach a lesson, when he interfaced with others, he was in command of himself and the other mech. Oh, he might let other believe they were in control, might allow a subordinate or even a prisoner have their way with his frame if it got Jazz the results he was seeking, but it was illusion. Jazz never gave up control, and no matter what happened when he faced a bot, he _never_ offlined, never needed to reboot. He had tooled his own systems to be sure of it.

That was, until he started facing his one-time adversary. Whereas before he had been able to drive Prowl out of control with anger, now Prowl was out of control with desire, and when he turned that desire onto its object, they both lost all control and became the base instincts of their most ancient coding: the need to become _one_, the loss of _self_ within the strength of _together_. It was as though they had awakened some ancient memory of when their kind was a hive, a single organism, tiny nanocells of the body of Primus with no individual will of their own but the ecstatic and brilliant oneness of the collective.

Arguments and intellectual stand offs, asserting their separateness, their individuality, were a familiar comfort they both retreated to in the face of the rapturous loss of control and self. But that familiar comfort only lasted as long as it took for them to become heated again with the unrelenting desire for the others frame, processors, and spark. Surely they could not survive this. They were going to melt and not even Ratchet would be able to save them.

Yes, limiting how often they merged seemed prudent and logical, as Prowl had put it.

"Jazz," Prowl said quietly, acknowledging him with a tone that sounded flat only to one who did not _know_ the mech's spark. The datapad was already locked away in the SIC's desk, and Jazz realized that his processors had wandered. How long had Prowl been watching him?

"Hey," Jazz said, forcing himself to look nonchalant rather than the addicted, terrified, out of control mech he now was. "Got the rest of the donations. Ratchet says we're good t' go."

"We could wait another decaorn, Jazz. Let Mirage and Hound try first. They certainly do not share our hesitations."

"Never gonna be ready, Prowler. Should be us. Set the example an' all that slag."

Jazz felt Prowl's attention become more intense and focused through the bond and through the fluctuation of his mate's field. "I know that it isn't the danger of ceasing to function that has you so frightened," Prowl said slowly, standing and walking toward him, and slag if the Praxian didn't radiate utter and complete desirability as his sensor wings gently fluttered with a relaxation he only showed in the privacy of their quarters.

"I'm not frightened," Jazz objected weakly, knowing that his slagging bondmate could feel the lie.

~You are,~ Prowl said, shifting to the bond. ~You are terrified. Show me. Share it now so it doesn't interfere tomorrow.~

Frag. Was that a whimper that his vocalizer had just made? Jazz did _not_ just whimper.

"We merged a couple orns ago. We're gonna merge again tomorrow," Jazz protested weakly, refusing to speak over the bond, even as he took a step toward his mate and his interface protocols roared to life simply in response to the nudge Prowl gave to his spark. "Slag you! Don't do this to me," he pleaded just before he crushed their frames together, his hands going immediately to the sensor wings his feral-self could not get enough of mapping to the accompaniment of Prowl's moans.

~Show me, love,~ Prowl flooded the bond with his pit-spawned acceptance and Jazz felt his plates parting despite himself. In a last ditch, futile effort for control, he pushed Prowl's aft against the desk and leaned in, his glossa tracing the pressure sensors on his winglets that he knew would make his mate's knee joints buckle. If he could focus them on physical pleasure...

...But Prowl's chamber had already spiraled open, and Jazz's own did so without his conscious signal, his corona lunging to meet the spark adjacent to his, his own frame moving him into position as though they were magnetized.

~Frag you! Love you!~ Jazz groaned even as tendrils from his spark grasped onto the other with a hiss and crackle and bursts of light that momentarily offlined his optics under his visor to protect their components. He crushed Prowl's mouth with a kiss, his glossa frenetic to regain some measure of the control he was losing as their coronas began to weave together and combine. Love and acceptance surged into his spark, along with pure, open honestly about Prowl's own fears of being an adequate creator, of creating sparklings who were destined for war, of someday having to send them into a battle he knew they would not likely return from, of failing to plan adequately to properly protect them while they were weak and vulnerable, losing them to Decepticon reformat only to face them again as enemies.

Jazz's spark responded, accepting, soothing, reinforcing just how much he trusted the mech who was now his mate, had trusted him even when they had hated one another. Prowl only had to nudge him again, and all his fears bled out like energon from a severed line. He had killed so many simply to survive as a youngling, for parts, for energon, and had nurtured a sadism that served him well during interrogations. He had bided his time with the cons and actively participated in atrocities he could never speak of. How could his spark not poison whatever it made?

All this, and only their coronas had merged.

The calm, soothing tone Prowl projected into his spark was in complete contradiction with the passionate desire that accompanied it. ~You are not evil. You are not a monster, Jazz. You chose to become an Autobot. You risked your own functioning to bring the intelligence which you did. You are willing to do things that injure your spark in order to save lives, to prevent another Praxus, to save our world.~

Jazz could only keen in response, crushing their chests together so he could fully lose control, lose himself to the love he did not deserve but was freely given by one who less than a five decaorns ago had wished him dead, and now only wanted to lose himself within Jazz. They became one being, swirling fears chased and soothed away by fierce love until love was all they knew.


	12. Budding Trouble

**Title**: Arranged by the Stars  
><strong>Chapter 12<strong>: Budding Trouble  
><strong>Fandom<strong>: G1 AU  
><strong>Author<strong>: femme4jack  
><strong>Chapter Pairing<strong>: Jazz/Prowl  
><strong>Chapter Rating<strong>: R  
><strong>Chapter Warnings<strong>:smut (mech/mech spark), robot procreation (non mechpreg), supernatural  
><strong>Series Warnings<strong>: arranged sparkbonds, lots of conversation about robot procreation (non mechpreg), AU G1 canon history  
><strong>Chapter Summary<strong>: Under careful medical supervision, Prowl and Jazz attempt to bud the first newspark since the fall of the towers and the loss of the Key to Vector Sigma  
><strong>Notes<strong>: Written for the April 2011 challenge at the prowlxjazz community on livejournal. Yes, I know it is now August :)  
>klik = 1.2 minutes; breem = 8.3 minutes; joor = 6.92 hours; orn = Cybertronian day32 joor/9.22 earth days; metacycle = Cybertronian month (230 orns)/5.81 earth years, vorn = Cybertronian year/83 earth-years  
>I know that "budding" normally refers to asexual reproduction. In the case of this reproduction method, since the combined sparks are, quite literally, one being when they form the new one, I still feel it is an appropriate term :)<p>

* * *

><p>Arranged by the Stars 12: Budding Trouble<p>

* * *

><p>Jazz gave a grimace as he took his first sip of the nanite-infused energon Ratchet had instructed them to consume before their first attempt at kindling. The normal pink glow had taken on a sickly green caste as a result of the drugs that had been added to the mix, designed to both increase their charge and suppress overload. Jazz gave his bondmate a challenging look, then downed the rest in three large swallows, before finding his stabilizers suddenly out of kilter, his gyro-sensors and optics giving the impression of a spinning room. He felt Ratchet assisting him onto the berth before his knee joints could buckle. It as not a pleasant high, and he halfway wondered how he was going to convince his chestplates to part considering how much he suddenly felt the need to purge.<p>

"Easy," Ratchet said, "it will pass in a moment. Wouldn't be nearly as bad if you had taken your time with it like Prowl is." Jazz managed to glance to his bondmate who was methodically sipping the contents of his cube, managing to look completely nonplussed by the drugged mixture.

He couldn't bring himself to respond verbally. He was certain that if he opened his mouth he would, indeed, purge. Instead, he offlined his optics to stop the room from spinning and activated a subroutine he used on missions in order to artificially suppress the anxiety that was dominating his emotional protocols. He knew that the feelings were still present, still swirling through his spark, but at least, for the moment, they weren't controlling his processors. Shortly, when they merged, he would have no choice but to feel again, and could only hope that Prowl's continued calm and certainty would still the frenetic storm that was his spark.

It wasn't long before Prowl was sitting on the berth next to his prone form, his hand splayed across Jazz's chest and thumb gently stroking the seam in his chestplates above his bondmate's spark in an unconscious gesture of affection that would have been unimaginable coming from the SIC a few decaorns ago. Jazz relaxed into the touch, feeling the purge reflex and disequilibrium pass. He felt Prowl urging his spark to calm through their bond, and could not bring himself to resent the intrusion. Not when the feeling was something akin to a chilled solvent sluicing away muck from an overheated, dirty frame. He cautiously deactivated his emotional suppression subroutine and found that he had, indeed, calmed.

"Alright, you two. The effects of the nanites will last approximately 4 breems, so there isn't much time for preliminaries," Ratchet instructed, not for the first time. "Once you are fully merged, you will remain so, building the charge, for approximately two breems. I don't need to warn you how intense a merge of that length of time will be. You won't overload, you won't go offline, and it will hurt like the pit. It is imperative that you focus your intention on budding the new spark, no matter what else is happening. Your systems are going to be giving you every warning imaginable, so just deactivate you HUDs now and let me do the monitoring. I will stop the process if either one of your sparks are in danger as long as it is safe to do so, but once the new spark begins to form its core, stopping the process can actually be more dangerous than seeing it through. Once the core of the new spark is stabilized, I will cut it away from your sparks with the energon scalpel, put it in the transport pod, and Wheeljack will take it to the incubation vat. We need to get it out of the proximity of your fields until it begins to build the crystalline matrix for its sparkchamber. If the newspark feels your fields before then, it can, quite literally, extinguish itself attempting to get back to its source."

"We are extremely well versed on the process, Ratchet, and are wasting the precious time the nanites can act to suppress our overloads," Prowl said firmly, arranging himself so that he was lying on his side, facing Jazz, his sensor wings hanging off of the side of the extra wide berth.

"You'll be surprised at how difficult it is to pull up a data file in the midst of all of this," Ratchet said, in a far more patient and gentle tone than was his norm. "Having the information in your temporary short-term files could mean the difference between success and a critical mistake during this. The most important thing to remember is to disregard your own warning systems. Disengage them and focus solely on forming the newspark, no matter what you are feeling."

Jazz was beginning to wonder who was the more nervous, Ratchet or himself. Neither Ratchet nor Wheeljack, nor anyone on base for that matter, had performed the procedure they were about to try. The sheer improbability and danger of it all was enough to settle Jazz further and put him into his mission mindset where his sole focus was on achieving the impossible.

"Don't worry 'bout a thing, Ratchet. Prowler an' I have our part covered," Jazz said turning so that he, too, was on his side, facing Prowl, feeling a tingling thrill travel up his chassis at the intimacy of their position as he wrapped an arm firmly around his bondmate's waist.

Ratchet gave a quick nod and began connecting them to the room's plethora of monitors. Jazz felt Prowl draw in a cooling vent of air, and he did the same, leaning his helm against his bondmate's chevron. He could feel the charge build in response to the drugged energon as surely as though Prowl's fingers were stroking his sensors-rich plating.

~Ready t' be one?~ Jazz asked through their bond, his plates unlocking just enough to bathe the room in his spark's silver light.

~Hopefully just for a couple breems, and not for good,~ Prowl responded dryly, unlocking his own plates and locking his arm joints around Jazz to keep them both on the berth. Their sparks were already lunging for one another as the charge continued to build from proximity along. They both hardly noticed Ratchet strapping them to the berth with magnetized bonds to keep them in position and prevent one from accidentally pulling back when the merge went critical.

Their sparks took over even as their chestplates parted the rest of the way. Laser cores moved aside and their chambers moved up and forward, the egg-shaped crystals spiraling open to spin prismatic patterns of silver and amber light on every surface of the room. The tendrils of their coronas intertwined urging them together toward a brilliant wholeness, followed by their outer layers and then their cores flowing into one another with a flash of blinding light as they merged. Intense pleasure, physical, emotional and something more, pulsed through the merged cores into their frames, but swiftly swelled into blinding pain as the overload did not come. Had their HUDs not been disabled per Ratchet's order, dire warnings of potential spark failure would have been flashing.

Their cores and consciousness briefly separated as their sparks attempted to end to agonizing merge, primal fear overcoming them both, but locked limbs and magnetic bonds would not allow them to fully part. ~No~ they both cried out in one voice, realizing the mistake they were making. Their cores reengaged even as Ratchet yelled words they could not comprehend over the roar of their own surging charges, agony and ecstasy raging from their merged sparks through their frames in equal measure, never bringing them to completion. Their chronometers were among the many systems that had already failed due to the raw energy flowing through them, so the growing agony seemed to last an eternity. Then time seemed to stand still as the bondmates frantically attempted to focus their wills on a needle point of searing heat at the center of their combined core. They felt the point begin to spin, coalescing spark energy around itself. ~Yes!~ they both cried together as the core of the new sentience began to form in the midst of their own. Vocalizers shorted out with their screams when the forming spark tore away from their own, ripping through their outer layers until it spun amid their combined coronas, pulling energy to itself in an agonizing vortex. They were both keenly aware that it was not yet whole, not yet strong enough, and willed it to take what it needed as it spun faster and faster, pulling energy from their combined core until they felt certain their own sparks would gutter and extinguish from the loss. Neither could hear Ratchet's frantic cry to Wheeljack that he was losing them. Their only focus was on the new spark, willing it to stabilize, to be whole, to be able to separate from the spinning tornado of light that still connected it to their merged core.

Then came a blinding flash, and the merged bondmates felt a third spark, far larger and more powerful than their own join their merge, adding its own strength to the newly forming spark until with a blinding flash it stabilized, but with two cores rather than one. They felt the third, massive spark give another pulse, preventing them from guttering. Their last impression was of vast affection and amusement, along with several gentle admonitions before the larger presence left and they knew no more.

* * *

><p>Every line of code in Ratchet's medic programming was screaming at him to end the merge, but he couldn't, not without risking that combined spark of Prime's two top lieutenants would explode. The new core forming inside their own was unstable, pulling dangerous levels of spark energy from its creators until it finally had strength enough to rip through their sparks to the surface. But even then, desperately fighting to coalesce and stabilize, the madly spinning new core looked as though it were trying to pull itself apart into two even as it pulled spark energy into itself at a dizzying rate. Insight hit the CMO even as Wheeljack shouted. The new spark needed to split. It was too large, and too unstable.<p>

"You have to split it, Ratchet, or it will explode and take them with it," Wheeljack both commed and cried aloud over the raw energy coursing through the room. Ratchet activated his energon scalpel with a curse, and prepared to sever the new core in two, either stabilizing it or extinguishing it before it could destroy the much larger merged sparks that were visibly dimming. But before his hand reached frantically spinning light, Prowl and Jazz's combined core gave a blinding pulse, and the new spark split on its own into two tiny, bright gold orbs, instantly stabilizing as they began to orbit around one another, sharing one corona like a atom with two nuclei. No longer pulling energy from its creators' merged cores, the dual-cored spark instead seemed to dance around the silver and amber tendrils that wove about it caressingly.

Wheeljack was standing right next to him, the containment pod activated and ready as Ratchet used the scalpel to cut the twin-cored spark away from Prowl and Jazz's intermingled coronas. As tiny as they were, the two cores burned hot and bright, never ceasing to orbit one another. As soon as the last tendril was cut the new spark tumbled into the pod, which Wheeljack sealed and whisked out of the room even as Jazz and Prowl's coronas leapt after, reaching impossible lengths to try to reclaim what had been taken away. Finally their merged sparks settled and their cores slowly began to disengage. Ratchet unbound them, allowing their frames to separate. Both mechs were offline, their systems depleted to near-stasis levels, but their sparks, at least, were still aware of each other, coronas continuing to mingle and caress one another in comfort that their offline processors were not even aware of.

It had been close. Far too close. Ratchet had nearly lost both officers, and the resulting twin-cored spark had a very low probability of survival. Ratchet cursed Megatron, Vector Sigma, and Optimus alike for the string of events that had led them to were they were now, unable to create new life without risking the sparks of bondmates who would never have chosen one another without the Matrix's intervention. Muttering to himself, he set both mechs up with an energon drip, and continued to monitor their weakened sparks and begin to catalog the damaged systems that would need repair. They, at least, would survive. He ached for the fact that when they onlined, in all probability, he would have to inform them that the twin-cored spark they had nearly died to create had, itself, extinguished.

::I've got it...them...settled into a vat. Nothin' more to do other than to see if they can fully separate and begin to form chambers. We can wait and see if that happens on its own, or try to separate the cores with a scalpel,:: Wheeljack commed, his normally ebullient tone subdued. They both knew that the most likely result would be first one, and then the other tiny new spark guttering and extinguishing within an orn, regardless of their course of action.

Something stirred behind Ratchet and he turned, shocked to see Jazz already online, visor glowing dimly and a few wisps of smoke rising from relays that had been slagged during the merge.

"I need t' go see it...t' see them," Jazz said softly.

"You need to recharge and heal. You only barely made it through that," Ratchet said bluntly. "Your field will confuse them anyhow. Not until the crystal matrix of their chambers has begun to form."

"Not in this case," Prowl murmured, his optics, too, coming online long before they should. "Feeling our fields may help them to separate into distinct sparks."

"And when did you get medic training?" Ratchet asked archly, his patience thin.

"Aint 'bout medic trainin'" Jazz said in a tone that would suffer no argument. "Primus told us, while we were merged. We need t' get in there, or bring the vat here if we can't move."

Ratchet waited for Prowl to contradict Jazz, or reprimand his bondmate for an inappropriate joke about the deity he normally only invoked as a curse, but the tactician did neither, simply nodding his agreement. Ratchet realized that arguing was futile, anyhow. If their fields caused the split-cored spark to attempt to rejoin its creator and extinguish in the process, it would only speed up what would inevitably happen.

::Wheeljack, bring the vat in here. I can't move these two, and they are insisting on seeing the sparks.::

There was a brief hesitation before Wheeljack answered, ::Whatever ya say, Ratchet.:: A few kliks later, he floated the incubation vat through the door on a hover pad, settling it next to the berth where Prowl was lying against Jazz's back, spooning him and caressing his now closed chestplates. Both mechs reached out and touched the vat, their fields pulsing with pure awe as they looked at the tiny spark with two bright gold cores. Communicating silently over their bond, each flared their fields as they felt their sparks reaching for the sentience that had so recently been a part of their own united cores. The new spark flared in response, parts of it pulling toward each of their hands which were placed on opposite ends of the transparent, liquified mineral and nanite filled vat, finally completing the split of outer layers and coronas as well as cores, leaving two distinct sparks that reached for one another, orbited one another, even caressed the other, but were their own entities. Already the liquefied minerals were crystallizing around them in the beginnings of spark chambers.

"Primus," Wheeljack whispered, watching the process with awe as his fins flashed a myriad of colors of mixed joy and alarm.

"Indeed," Prowl whispered as his partially upright frame collapsed back onto the berth.

* * *

><p>When Optimus later was permitted to enter, he found his closest advisers fully repaired, recharging with Prowl spooning Jazz, legs intertwined and hands still reaching out out to the vat where two distinct crystal chambers, still only a single layer thin, reflected the light of two gold sparks. The micro-thin chambers rested against one another, settled against the wall of the vat as close to the fields of the recharging mechs as possible. While earlier, the proximity might have been dangerous, now, feeling their creators' fields was a needed comfort for the developing sparks. Later, other mechs whose code the new sparks might integrate would take their turns at the vat, welcoming the sparklings, letting them know through the comfort of their fields that they were part of a cohort, that though they had been violently separated from their source and then again from one another, they were not alone, they were still one with something larger than themselves in all the ways that mattered.<p>

"You know I am not one to claim miracle, but these two sparks should not be alive," Ratchet said softly, peering into the vat and running yet another scan.

"Indeed," Optimus said, his own broad hands coming to rest on the helms of his recharging officers in affection. "With such a beginning, it will be fascinating to see who they become."

Ratchet shifted uncomfortably for a moment, then gestured awkwardly toward Prowl and Jazz. "They both claim they felt Primus join the merge. I sensed no evidence of it through my sensors or the monitors. If it were anyone but Prowl making the claim..."

"No matter how advanced our science becomes, we will never fully understand the mysteries of our own sparks," Optimus answered softly, kneeling down to peer into the liquid of the incubation vat. "The oldest glyph for a kindling merge is to become one with Primus. The same glyph we use for becoming one with the Matrix when we extinguish. Who is to say what really happens when bonded sparks kindles a new life, or in this case, two."

"Or they were in so much pain that they shared a hallucination," Ratchet offered, though he, too, knelt beside Prime to peer into the chamber.

"A plausible explanation, and likely the one both of them will adopt once they settle from the experience," Optimus said in a tone the made clear he did not buy the logical explanation for a klik.


End file.
